On Wednesday, touring conservative preacher Jesse Morrell came to the Oswego State campus and started preaching in the Hewitt Quad against homosexuality, transgender individuals and women’s rights in general.

When Jade Laplante and Sarah Novak, two women in a same-sex relationship, walked by him while holding hands, they said that Morrell began targeting them specifically. Once they kissed, the women reported that he turned towards them and began approaching them, which made them feel threatened. This is when Morrell crossed the line from reasonably sharing his viewpoints to unacceptably verbally harassing specific individuals. 

As he approached them, he began speaking specifically about how he believed that homosexuals are going to hell, that women needed to be with men and men only because of their reproductive organs, and other hateful and closeminded rhetoric. 

A friend of Laplante and Novak arrived in the quad as this happened, and began shouting back at Morrell that he needed to back off and stop speaking to them so hatefully. A crowd formed around and began shouting at Morrell, telling him that he had no right to speak so hatefully on campus and he needed to leave the scene. 

Eventually, University Police was called to the scene, and the officers informed Morrell that he was not allowed to simply start speaking on campus whenever he wishes to. 

Oswego State policy states that any non-profit third party can speak on campus, in the southern section of the area of the central quad known as the sundial, provided they receive the proper permits from the Campus Life office. This is not to prevent open expression of ideas, but a legally allowed restriction that protects any demonstrations on campus from interfering with Oswego State’s primary purpose, to teach its students.

Laplante and Novak said that they felt that UP did more to help Morrell than they did for them, by fully explaining in detail how Morrell could get a permit to speak on campus. If Laplante and Novak were truly being harassed verbally by Morrell, UP should not have sought to make it possible for him to return to campus. The officers certainly should not have given him a step-by-step guide to how he could get the proper permits. Laplante and Novak said that the officers they spoke with did not help much, because they were not overtly verbally threatened by Morrell. 

Public college campuses across the United States pride themselves on being forums for public discourse. It is extremely common for religious spokespeople to proselytize on public college campuses, and provided they do so in a respectful manner, there is nothing wrong with that. If a preacher genuinely believes that homosexuals are going to hell, while that position is unoriginal and archaic, they are welcome to share that opinion in a public forum, provided they follow the nonpartisan rules in order to speak there. Morrell did not follow those rules original-ly, expecting that he could just walk on and interrupt the campus. What is worse is that he then decided to turn specifically on two women just because they were in a same-sex relationship. 

Clearly, Morrell was not interested in convincing people of his beliefs. He was more interested in scaring and harassing any LGBTQ+ individuals he may find on campus. Not only is that shameful behavior, it is dangerous. What would Morrel have done if someone he believed to be transgender walked by? What would he have done if nobody had been nearby when he began approaching Laplante and Novak? 

There are plenty of Christian preachers who speak on college campuses without verbally attacking individuals on those campuses. Morrell decided he would be hateful rather than try to legitimately engage in the marketplace of ideas, and for that he should have been swiftly and decisively removed from campus.