A large crowd of rowdy students at the University of North Carolina Greensboro on Friday demanded the conservative Young Americans for Freedom chapter at the school be shut down after it posted a quote by Ben Shapiro on its Instagram page.
The post stated: “Men cannot become women. Women cannot become men. Men who believe they are women are not real women.” This is a quote by the firebrand pundit Shapiro who is known for his “facts don’t care about your feelings” mantra.
“On Wednesday, we decided to post a Ben Shapiro quote and tagged it #wednesdaywisdom — we didn’t think anything was going to come of it,” the group told The College Fix in a direct message Friday. “We just thought it would be a nice addition to our page.”
“Almost immediately we triggered the school’s leftists and they began to spread the post and spam comment personal attacks against us and our members.”
More than 100 students gathered in the quad for a protest, accusing the club of being “transphobic” and violating the college’s anti-discrimination policy, according to videos of the event.
UNCG YAF told The Fix that demonstrators called on the administration to take away the club’s ability to meet and screamed chants such as “F*ck YAF” and “UNC Gay.”
The attacks were particularly bad against the club’s marketing chair. People screamed vulgarities using his name, and some people distributed photoshopped images of the student performing crude sexual acts, according to tweets reviewed by The College Fix.
Along with these attacks, The College Fix reviewed several Instagram accounts made to mock the UNCG YAF chapter. These accounts ranged from trying to raise support to ban the club to mocking YAF by calling the members fascists or other names.
“We here are shocked at the response we got from simply posting one Ben Shapiro post and we are grateful for all the support we have been getting from like-minded conservatives,” UNCG YAF told The Fix, noting other conservative organizations have reached out and shown their support.
UNCG YAF has not deleted the Ben Shapiro post, which also has received a slew of negative comments.
Despite the efforts to ban YAF on campus, the club said it is not currently under investigation by campus leaders.
In a statement provided to The Daily Wire, a UNCG spokesperson reaffirmed the university’s support for free speech and referred to its university policies:
“At UNCG, equity, diversity, and inclusion are more than words, they are the bedrock of who we are and what we do. We value the differences and contributions of all Spartans, and we strive to create a community where all members feel supported, affirmed, and welcome,” the statement said. “We seek to provide all who live, learn, and work here the opportunity to become active participants in an intellectually vibrant community that celebrates a broad range of ideas and perspectives. We support free speech and social discourse and have an expectation that all will do so with civility and respect for others. We believe there is no better place than a college campus for thought-provoking discussions. As a public university, we cannot regulate free expression on the basis of content, whether we agree or disagree.”
Editor’s note: The author of this article is the YAF president at Grove City College.
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