On Wednesday, Oct. 16 traveling preacher and YouTuber Jesse Morrell brought his sermon to the Oswego State campus. Speaking from the Hewitt quad in the center of campus, Morrell’s speech amassed a crowd of students, many who responded negatively to the preacher, resulting in an intervention from University Police after half of an hour.

Provocation reportedly started when Morrell saw Jade Laplante and Sarah Novak, two women who are in a same-sex relationship, kiss in front of him, which drew his resentment.

Laplante said that Morrell targeted them when he noticed they were walking while holding each other’s hands. Laplante said that Morrell yelled “You better be sisters or good friends,” which she and her girlfriend responded to by kissing. 

He began to shout at them more, enraging both Laplante and Novak, who turned to leave. Morrell began to step towards them. That was when Ariel Gutman-Gates, a friend of Laplante and Novak, saw what was happening and began yelling back at Morrell.

“Ariel is sort of a hothead sometimes, so he charged towards this guy and starts yelling at him,” Laplante said. “A crowd started forming because of the argument.”

The crowd formed and began to shout over Morrell, limiting his ability to speak and causing an onlooker to call University Police.

Gutman-Gates approached Morrell at various points throughout his sermon, trying to persuade him to leave the campus.

“It started off really small, then he started screaming more and more, then I got more combative with him in the sense that I didn’t want anyone else getting involved with the guy,” Gutman-Gates said. “I know I can control myself, I’m not going to touch the guy, but I don’t know about other people.”

University Police responded to the crowd after an onlooker called them, and officers eventually asked Morrell to get the appropriate permits or he would be unable to continue his demonstration.

“We received a complaint that there was a ministry person in the quad and we went there to see if he had the permits to be there,” said University Police chief John Rossi.

Morrell did not have a permit from Campus Life, so he was asked by UP to either leave or go the Campus Life center in order to receive the permits required. Campus Life has a minimum processing period of three days for any permit requests, so Morrell was unable to continue speaking on Wednesday.

Laplante and Novak both said that they felt that UP did more to help Morrell than they did to help them. 

“They could have told him that he needed a free speech permit to speak here and left it at that,” Laplante said.

“But then they proceeded to tell him everything down to the wire he needed to do in order to come back. And he told us that he will be back.”

“It felt like University Police was inviting him to spread his hate more, and it felt like they were helping him more than they helped us,” Novak agreed.

Morrell seemed to change his mind in the timeframe between leaving the quad and leaving the Campus Life office, telling reporters that he did not plan to return any time soon as he left the office. 

On Friday morning, Morrell posted a video covering the entirety of his time on campus, from when he started speaking to when he left campus. As he exited the campus center after being told he would not be able to continue demonstrating Wednesday, Morrell said he plans to return to the Oswego State campus “within the week.” At the end of his video, Morrell shared a screenshot of an email he received from Campus Life, rejecting his application for a permit to speak on campus. The email states that his application was rejected because it was not filed 3 days before his requested dates. Morrell applied for a permit for the dates of Oct. 16 to Oct. 19.

Gutman-Gates asserted that Morrell was overstepping his boundaries on campus. He said that while Morrell has the right to discuss his ideas, he should not do so in a way that could harm an individual. 

“Your speech is protected, but you should not target people,” Gutman-Gates said.

Morrell said he has come to expect a strong response from the people he speaks to.

“I fully expect sinners to be sinners,” Morrell said. “That’s my target audience, the unbelievers. And I fully expect the atheists to heckle me, the homosexuals to heckle me and those are the people I’m trying to reach.”   

Morrell has reportedly been roaming the country for 19 years, making stops on college campuses to speak with students. Morrell makes his trips to other universities from his home in Texas. He often records his events and posts the footage to his ministry website “Open Air Outreach.”

Morrell said that this is not his first visit to Oswego State, disclosing that he had once preached in Oswego in 2005.

Oswego State policy supports free ideas and conversation, stating that any third party can openly speak on campus. However, they must first go through Campus Life, who can then determine the time, place and manner of the assembly. Due to Morrell’s lack of college approval, he was asked to cease his presentation.

The campus does see itself as a place where free speech is upheld. The Oswego Free Speech, Civil Discourse and Peaceful Assembly webpage reads that “Members of the SUNY Oswego community will have different perspectives and ideas, which may conflict. Our role is not to shield people from ideas and opinions with which they disagree or are potentially offensive.”

Ultimately, the page recommends that students ignore speakers they disagree with and to not engage those that are openly seeking confrontation.

“Others might choose to ignore the speaker in order to deny them the attention they seek. The law does not, however, give individuals the right to threaten a speaker, commit any violent act against a speaker, or create a situation in which the speaker cannot be heard. Ultimately, critics cannot silence that with which they disagree-no matter how strongly they may disagree.”

The Oswego State administration did not comment by the time of publication for this story.

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This story was a collaboration between WTOP-10 and The Oswegonian.

Alexander Gault-Plate, Ben Grieco, Julia Tilley and Stephen Novak contributed to this report.

Photo by Ben Grieco | The Oswegonian