Aloha
Good point.
Good point? How?
The protest in Hawaii includes this tidbit (found here):
"While McClain said the students were trespassing, he also said he would accommodate them in his office even though their presence is disrupting university operations."
In both cases trespassing is involved. In the father's case, he refused to leave, so school officials called police. They arrested him when he still refused to leave.
In the university's case, the students refused to leave but the school's president, according to the news I've read, hasn't asked police to arrest the students. That seems different to me. When the president asks the students to leave and the police won't arrest the students for refusing to leave, then it's a "pick your protest" point.
Tony, how long do you think the UH president would let a group of students trespass if they were protesting Ward Churchill's visit? Or supporting the military? And how long would trespassing have been allowed if the dad was upset that "diversity" education was not being taught?
That was my point.
In all honesty, probably not long, but I don't know the president's views. Maybe he values "debate", in whatever ridiculous form it takes. But that's a debate for the UH Board to decide if the president is making the wrong choice.
That doesn't give Mr. Parker the right to protest at the school once he was asked to leave. He wasn't arrested for his beliefs, even if his conviction in his beliefs kept him from leaving. Obscuring that fact is what's going on with this story, even though the real issue is the serious communication failure between the school and the Parkers leading up to the time when the offending book went home. Everything that happened after it was equally ridiculous, but none of it gave him the right to continue trespassing once asked to leave. There were other channels he could've pursued which wouldn't have ended in arrest.
Ultimately, my problem wasn't that you disagreed with the way the situations were handled. I was acknowledging the undertone of decrying liberal bias against conservative ideals, which is what I inferred from your post. If that's not what you meant, I apologize. But my basic emphasis stands. Mr. Parker was arrested simply because he trespassed, no matter how most of the blogosphere is portraying it.
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