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T H E I N D E P E N D E N T V O I C E F O R K A N S A S S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y
kstatecollegian.com
kansas state collegian
vol. 124, issue 3
friday, august 24, 2 0 1 8
As preachers call students whores, questions on freedom of speech arise
RAFAEL GARCIA KAYLIE MCLAUGHLIN GREG WOODS THE COLLEGIAN
It’s a cool, wet Thursday afternoon during the first week of the semester, and Jed Smock, 75, is an oddball amid the stream of students in K-State’s Bosco Plaza. Looking right out of a barbershop quartet with in a neat blue blazer, bowtie and boater hat, Smock — infamous across the country as Brother Jed — carries a stool with him, sits it and himself down squarely in the center of the plaza, and proceeds to call the students whores. Smock and his wife, “Sister” Cindy Smock, are no strangers to college campuses. Together, they head Campus Ministry USA, an evangelical organization based out of Indiana that targets campuses across the nation, but particularly in the Midwest. “We just come out here and start speaking out against sins. Especially the sexual issues, and the drunkenness, and the extensive use of mind-altering drugs — the sins that are prevalent on college campuses.” Mr. Smock said. Smock and his wife said they don’t shy away from taking a confrontational approach toward their work, although they said they’ve never initiated any violent confrontation. Last August, Mrs. Smock suffered a broken ankle after she said she was assaulted by a student when the couple was preaching at Illinois State University. “We are confrontational, we do ex-
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Olivia Bergmeier | THE COLLEGIAN
Jeb Smock sits in front of a jeering crowd of students as he preaches and condemns students. Smock and his organization, Campus Ministry USA, are infamous across the United States for their charged rhetoric and confrontational ministry. pect a reaction,” Mr. Smock said. In recent years, public universities across the country have grappled with how to handle the confrontations and outrage that result when incendiary speech —protected under freedom of speech laws — ignite tensions on campus. At campuses nationally, students have protested and succeeded in keeping controversial speakers from coming to their campuses, including University of California, Berkeley, where students caused $100,000 worth of damage during riots over alt-right personality Milo Yiannopoulos’s planned speech at the school in January. University administrators canceled the event just two hours
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before he was set to speak, out of concern for the public’s safety. In July, the University of Kansas removed a flag art exhibit from a flagpole outside a campus building after it received intense condemnation from government officials, including Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Gov. Jeff Colyer, then the two candidates in the Republican primary governor ballot. “While we want to foster difficult dialogue, we cannot allow that dialogue to put our people or property in harm’s way,” KU Chancellor Douglas Girod said at the time. At K-State, the university has come under fire for upholding freedom of
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speech ideals, even when such speech conflicts with the university’s stated Principles of Community. Last September, white nationalist posters appeared overnight on campus in what would turn into a series of similar events that pushed the boundaries of free speech, including a KKK reference on social media and an obscene chant at sporting events. In those cases, the university took action or issued statements to handle the ensuing outrage, but stopped short of taking any formal disciplinary action against students or groups. The year prior to those events, the K-State general counsel sent out a newsletter outlining the role of freedom of speech on college campuses. It read: “The courts point out that offensive speech and unpopular viewpoints are what need legal protection the most, because that is the type of expression people are most likely to ask the government to shut down or that the government itself might want to shut down. Free speech protections are in place under the law for good reason.” Pat Bosco, dean of students, said events like these are “troubling” but a great chance for the university to educate students. “We’ve got to be stronger than just words,” Bosco said. “We have a chance to educate, that’s the whole idea of the First Amendment, for us to be able to have this kind of dialogue.”
see page 5, “SPEECH”
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NEWS
Think it’s been a damp first week? You’re not alone by Faith Leatherman It’s been a very wet start to the school year with Manhattan receiving 3.97 inches of rainfall since the start of the semester Monday. But is this rainfall anything out of the ordinary? Audra Hennecke, a meteorologist at the Topeka bureau of the National Weather Service, says it’s not uncommon to get large amounts of rain like this week’s in a short amount of time. “Throughout the year, we have been pretty dry,” Hennecke said. “This year isn’t much different from other dry years we have had in the area of rainfall. Usually we will have a few days or a week out of a dry year where we get a large amount of rain in a short amount of time, so this isn’t abnormal for us.” Drainage, rather than amount of rain, has been more of an issue for the area, Hennecke said, with localized flooding due to poor drainage. Reagan Smith, freshman in open option, said the weather has made getting around and driving harder. For others, like Moe Bisheh, graduate student in engineering, the rain has had a dampening effect on his motivation to get to campus outside of classes. Despite the recent rains, much of the area, including Manhattan, remains in a severe drought. “We still need several more inches of rain to help us out of this drought,” Hennecke said. For the weekend’s forecast, see page 2.