Rally at Texas A&M Cancelled
Following the tragic events that took place in Charlottesville, Texas A&M has decided to cancel an event that was scheduled to take place on September 11.
After the Charlottesville rally ended in tragedy, claiming the life of 32-year-old Heather Heyer and and injuring 35 people, colleges are concerned about something similar happening on their campuses during protests. Texas A&M is one college that has decided to cancel an event that was planned for September 11. According to CNN, the upcoming rally was to be a white nationalist protest for a ‘white lives matter’ campaign.
Richard Spencer, who’s a white supremacist and helped create the alt-right movement, was scheduled to speak at the Texas A&M event. Spencer spoke at the university last December, which created protests and upset even then, and led to the university changing its campus speaker policy; the new rules require speakers to be sponsored by university-sanctioned groups in order to reserve facilities on campus.
In a statement released by Texas A&M, it was said the event was cancelled due to “concerns about the safety of its students, faculty, staff and the public.”
“Texas A&M’s support of the First Amendment and the freedom of speech cannot be questioned,” the statement said. “However, in this case, circumstances and information relating to the event have changed and the risks of threat to life and safety compel us to cancel the event.”
Perhaps Republican Sen. Charles Schwertner said it best, “The First Amendment also allows us to respond in kind, to stand up and say what we believe as a society, as Americans and as Texans. We should not stand for bigotry, for violence, for racism.”