Following a day of Oswego State’s Young Americans for Freedom club tabling in the Marano Campus Center Tuesday, a string of both constructive and violent comments on the organization’s social media post continued throughout the week.

The conservative political club set up a table promoting their views on immigration and building a wall at the southern border of the U.S. and Mexico. The organization posted to Facebook and Twitter a photo of three members at the table with the caption, “Might be snowy outside but that’s not stopping leftist from getting heated at our Build The Wall Table!”

Several comments from students and others described their disagreement with their views, and some threatened the members in the photo, including on Twitter expressing the wish to shoot them. The organization then brought these threats to the attention of University Police.

“One of the students, I’m not sure if he goes here or otherwise, he described putting 27 bullets in our members, and there’s a few more students on Facebook who also said they’d like to shoot us,” said Jason Harry, co-founder and vice president of Young Americans for Freedom.

On Feb. 13, every student received two emails from President Deborah Stanley in regards to the social media threats. According to her email, UP has an open investigation and the social media sites removed the threatening comments.

“An ill-tempered and threatening response, even if provoked, may very well bolster those ideas you wish to debunk and may make you subject to judicial proceedings,” Stanley wrote in the email. “Please know we will continue to encourage all members of our campus community to embrace diversity in all its forms–diversity of people, thought and expression. And, we will remain vigilant about safety, encouraging anyone who feels unsafe or threatened to let us know.”

Harry said the purpose of tabling and presenting their conservative values was to start a dialogue with students as they walked down the main hall of the Marano Campus Center. He said several students stopped and engaged in conversation, exchanging their beliefs and reasons behind them, but he did not expect the violent reactions on social media to turn out as it did.

“We prefer political dialogue over threatening comments,” Harry said. “We had many good dialogues throughout the day. All sorts of people would come up to us and start talking, tell us what they believe, and we’d listen, and we’d tell them what we believe, and we hope both sides can come away with something from that.”

Student Association President Omar van Reenen said any student organization recognized by SA has the right to table and express their views. Free speech is protected, so long as it does not violate the U.S. Constitution or the SA constitution, but violent threats are not included, as they break the student conduct code, van Reenen said.

“I would encourage students to go up to the table and have an open, constructive, respectful dialogue with students who have opposing views,” van Reenen said. “If they feel that the table or student organizations that are tabling are creating a platform that goes against their views or what they feel the college’s diversity and inclusivity mission statements are, then under [their] club or organization, table again and share [their] platform or what [they] believe.”

Harry said, moving forward, he hopes the campus can be more accepting and tolerant of other people’s beliefs regardless of disagreement.

“It’s important to talk instead of slinging insults between each other because that’s not productive,” Harry said. “People are more brave behind their keyboard. People will say things that they don’t necessarily mean or think or believe, just because they are behind the safety of their keyboard and free from scrutiny from other people, like bystanders and such.”

Photo provided by Jason Harry