UCSC Democrats defend Republican peers
The UC Santa Cruz College Republicans have been hosting their Sunday night meetings since February.
Some students who identify as Democrats say they’ve been attending to exchange and debate their ideas.
That was supposed to happen again on Oct. 15, but a shouting match broke out instead.
A handful of student protesters crashed the club meeting attended by both Republicans and Democrats.
“Despite there was a diverse group. It was kind of funny watching them call minorities white supremacist to their faces,” said Brandon Lang, president of UCSC College Republicans.
“They were screaming in the library, so the library staff came to tell them to stop screaming, and they told them they would stop screaming as soon as the white supremacists left,” Phil Leonard, a registered Democrat.
Phil Leonard, a member of the UCSC College Democrats attends the meeting regularly and brings his friends, too.
“A lot of them are really excited after they leave the meeting. They are like I’ve never met people like this in my life who have such opposing viewpoints but argue it so well and with such clarity,” Leonard said.
But some college Republicans say more and more of those exchanges are kept behind closed doors.
“Minority students are especially afraid to talk about this thing and sometimes they try to keep appearing in the club at a minimum because they believe if people find out they are going there, they are going to be reprimanded socially,” Lang said.
Students at the meeting say the protesters and their extreme beliefs are a minority on campus.
And the school, known as a liberal campus, is also speaking out in support of students sharing their political views.
“That’s exactly what was happening in the McHenry Library when the meeting was interrupted. So it’s really unfortunate that when students are having that kind of discussions we want to see at our campus and really even at the national level, we want to have this exchange. You know, it’s unfortunate to see students interrupting it and preventing that dialogue from continuing,” UCSC spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason said.
