More on John Ashcroft

We're in the national news again!

As I mentioned before, John Ashcroft came and spoke at my school Tuesday night. (For the coverage in the school newspaper, click here—and check out the videos!) As might be expected with such a controversial conservative figure at a decidedly liberal institution, not everyone was happy about that, and there were a number of protests. In the Discourse section of today's issue of TKS, there were a number of responses to the protests, and while some were positive, others were decidedly less so, including one column entitled, "You embarrass me and yourself." Some of my fellow students have been called "rude," "immature," "disgraceful," and even "despicable," and I must say, I really don't think that's correct, necessary, or helpful. Now, I don't know that I have my thoughts very well organized at this point, but I'd like to put them out there, so I hope you'll bear with me.

Some people are upset because, they say, most of the Knox attendees had their minds made up about Ashcroft beforehand and went in closed-minded, with the intent only to ignore and mock him. To the second part of this, I can say that the people I went with, at least, had no such intentions; sure, we all went in not liking him, and came out not liking him, but we only wanted to see what he was going to say. And we got to do that. The protestors didn't stop that from happening. He wasn't there to change anyone's mind, and if you think otherwise, you really are deluding yourself.

Furthermore, I want to point out that if Knox had its mind made up about Ashcroft beforehand, he almost certainly had his mind made up about us. That "skepticism vs. cynicism" comment was certainly not off the cuff. Besides that, he knew the atmosphere of the campus coming in, and he was in full deflect mode; he didn't give a single straight answer during the entire Q&A, even to questions that weren't directly confrontational.

And speaking of questions, if you want to accuse students of not being prepared to listen, you must also realize that Ashcroft was not prepared to answer. He has proven himself many times over, in the media and elsewhere, to be completely unwilling to answer questions about the issues raised by the protestors and questioners. The point of these questions is not to get an actual answer, because we all know that won't happen. The point is to underscore the fact that there are differing opinions and to start a conversation about them, not in the context of the speaker—as I have said, that is not a practicable venue for such discussion—but later on, discussing things with friends in smaller groups afterward. Unless I read it wrong, this was, in fact, the goal in bringing Ashcroft to campus.

It has been pointed out that Ashcroft himself was not entirely blameless, as he ignored questions, turned them around, and even attacked some of the questioners; it has also been noted that his responses only became hostile because the questioning had grown hostile. I'd like to back it up a step further and point out that the questioning did not start out that way; it became hostile because Ashcroft was very blatantly not answering the questions posed. As I've said, this is to be expected from political speakers; however, his twisting of words, nitpicking at irrelevant details, and especially the wilful misunderstanding of questions seemed to me to be particularly blatant, even for a politician. I would expect an educated man addressing a college audience to have some modicum of respect for our intelligence; I didn't even ask a question, and I still felt insulted.

I'm not saying absolutely everything was perfect, or even acceptable—the gentleman who demanded to know how Ashcroft sleeps at night and whether or not he has a soul was out of line. I think we can all agree on that. But questions of that nature were not the majority. No other questioner made blatant personal insults as a part of a question; in fact, aside from a few poorly organized ramblers, I found the level of the questions to be quite acceptable, and often insightful and to-the-point.

In his piece, For Shame, TKS's perennial conservative columnist Chris Berger wrote, "I know students who want to transfer because of [the protests], and one professor contemplating not teaching next year if apologies are not issued." To people holding this opinion, I can only say, please go. People have the right to express their opinions; Mr. Ashcroft completed his speech without a substantial breakdown of order, people got to hear what he had to say, and hey, nobody got "tased." With the possible exception of Alex Enyart (the "do-you-have-a-soul" guy), no one but no one needs to apologize for stating their opinions. If this kind of dissent is enough to sour your opinion of the entire school, you're not the kind of people I think of when I think of Knox.

I highly encourage everyone to at least glance over all the articles in the Discourse section linked above, particularly the Thoughts from the Embers and Graham's column, "Regarding Politeness" (Graham was the student whose question about LGBT rights was quite blatantly dismissed).

And to Devin Day, Chris Berger, Melinda Jones, Lauren Peretz, and anyone else who's feeling embarrassed over this, you have every right to feel that way if you want to. But please speak for yourselves—I am most certainly not ashamed of my peers, and if you are, then I have to wonder, for whom?