There is something distinctly Orwellian about the Free Speech Zone in front of Tommy Trojan at USC. The quad exists as a place where students and other groups can organize protests without university approval. Naturally, this means that nowhere else on campus is a free speech zone.
While student groups such as the Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation and CALPIRG make use of this tiny little quad of freedom, the people who seem to get the most notice from the student body are the loud, angry nonstudent Christians who flock to USC a few times a semester.
On Friday you may have seen the furious, possessed man holding his extension cords in the air like the Ten Commandments. He forced the two output plugs together, demanding: "See?! See?! Homosexuality is not natural!"
Here was a relic of the Middle Ages, a man wearing a signboard proclaiming "God Abhors You!" and performing his grade-school object lesson about the biblical sin of homosexuality.
It was certainly not the first time I'd encountered this type of Christian in that delightfully obfuscatory "Free Speech Zone." Usually I see people shuffling past them quickly, avoiding their zealous pronouncements of the sins of casual sex, drug use and other things college students are stereotypically cited for.
But as the clouds literally parted that beautiful Friday and let the sun out, I watched this remarkable man preach his prejudice and witnessed a miracle performed by the USC student body.
"Get off of our campus! We don't want you here!"
"Why don't you do something positive for the world?"
"Stop preaching hate!" was my contribution.
The students who were passing through Hahn Plaza had turned on this bold Christian soldier and had started to tear his argument limb from limb.
Students were no longer spectators quickly walking past these vicious outsiders, offering an apathetic endorsement of blind hate speech in our very own Free Speech Zone. It quickly turned into the largest impromptu protest I had ever seen. It was not his overall beliefs they were protesting - not Christianity in general - but rather his presentation and the accompanying pollution of the air in the quad with his derogatory yells toward anyone who would turn an ear his direction.
And it was a truly wonderful thing to see and hear, a great thing to be a part of. I just wish it would and could happen more often.
Hate speech is one of the few forms of protest regulated - barely - by the Free Speech Zone in an effort to prevent violence. But as the university deigns to tolerate such offensive speech, it must be the students who fight back against these men and women.
It may seem extreme to posit that all students, when presented with a situation or speech with which they don't agree, should fight back using the same or, in this case, far more modern weapons than the offending party. It would create a lot of conflict in that little Free Speech Zone we have here at USC.
So long as this is not a "Free Speech Campus," students must be ready to hear such hateful speech as they walk toward the bookstore or Commons. And they must be willing to use their First Amendment rights just as that group of students did on Friday.
And that absurd, plug-carrying Christian was for but a moment exactly right when he cried out "Freedom of speech! I'll say whatever I want!" in response to the mob encircling him.
He has every right to stand there and yell about our sins and his salvation, but we have every right and every responsibility if we disagree to yell back our views on his words. It is something that should be a regular occurrence in that little square of First Amendment rights the university has so graciously afforded us.
Of course, discourse may seem a little inappropriate after the events of last Friday. Certainly the enraged USC students circling this man seemed a little too much for him to handle. And while his beliefs were questioned and evidence was demanded, the shouts became more about getting him off campus and less about wanting to know how he could preach so degradingly to his targets.
But discourse should be the word, and it was to a certain extent even in a situation as heated and hectic as the mob and the Christian.
And, more than some crazy nonstudent spewing hatred across Hahn Plaza, students should rise in protest of the designation of a zone specifically for freedom of speech on campus. The people who use it may be offensive to our ears, but the ground itself is offensive to our sensibilities and our rights as students.
This image-obsessed university - and maintaining a positive image is the subtext of any rule like this - should set aside concerns of schedule disruptions and let students speak wherever and however they would like.
There is something larger at stake here, much more important than that Christian in the Free Speech Zone.
Even though the Free Speech Zone still stands, fight back against those organizations that offend you, be it Greenpeace, CALPIRG or whoever.
Fight back, if you can, against the university policies that prevent students from protesting and preaching wherever they want. Whatever you do and however you do it, continue to fight on.
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John Wheeler is a cinema-television critical studies freshman from San Diego.
