“Last night’s events have left many people shaken. First and foremost, we want to reiterate that College Republicans had nothing to do with the speaker, Nick Fuentes, who appeared on campus.
There have been many lies, slanderous attacks and some genuine, honest miscommunication that have appeared recently, and we would like to address the issues immediately.
The aforementioned speaker’s views were, in no way, shape or form, representative of the Republican Party’s or College Republicans’ views. College Republicans had been led to believe that this was an approved Turning Point event, with a Turning Point approved speaker. This individual was largely unheard of and we had no reason to suspect otherwise.
His views are in direct contradiction to our club. We apologize for our carelessness in that assumption and are deeply sorry to anyone who was hurt by it. We have all been greatly misled.
As previously stated, College Republicans had nothing to do with this event. College Republicans canceled our meeting for this week two weeks ago due to midterms. While we did initially have a reservation on one room used, that is because we reserved our meeting rooms for the entire semester over winter break; as of Tuesday morning, any “hold” we had on the room in question should have been canceled.
Now, rather than continue to discuss an individual who lives off attention and should be forgotten and left in the past, we would like to commend two individuals who took the time yesterday to respectfully listen to each other’s views and create an open public dialogue.
Many times, College Republicans has tried to open up an exchange between opposing views, and unfortunately, we find that often times others are unwilling to meet us halfway and just want to protest and resort to name calling. Last night, Alexis Holmes of the Black Student Alliance and Anthony Labruna of College Republicans held a conversation addressing why they were there to a crowded lecture hall, each focusing on free speech.
Individuals were allowed to speak after waiting and being properly addressed and great progress was made to bring people of different backgrounds together.
It was made clear that members of the Black Student Alliance were there to quietly protest, to listen to what this individual had to say and to refute anything they disagreed with later. Similarly, any College Republican members were there thinking this was a much different speaker, willing to listen to what he had to say, and then think for themselves.
That is at the heart of free speech. If one dislikes a message, be it simple a disagreement or a vile message, the best thing to do is refute the arguments one by one and expose their weaknesses to the world. Simply banning or censoring speech only creates a forbidden knowledge which the taboo makes stronger. After hearing the speaker, Anthony Labruna later denounced Nick Fuentes stating, “Everything he said last night were views that are not held by the Republican Party.”
We would like to applaud both individuals for in this incredibly polarized political world, discourse between opposing views is seemingly discouraged. These are individuals who both their organizations should be proud of, and it with great honor that we can call Anthony Labruna a College Republican.”
