When does disturbing the peace require an actual disturbance?
Bush was invited to speak at the Ohio State commencement by representatives of the graduating class. But immediately before class members filed into the giant football stadium, an announcer instructed the crowd that all the university’s speakers deserve to be treated with respect and that anyone demonstrating or heckling would be subject to expulsion and arrest. The announcer urged that Bush be greeted with a “thunderous” ovation.
Cheerleading aside (and certainly I can understand the Powers that Be at Ohio State not wanting the “bad” press of hecklers), this seems a tad heavy-handed to me.
According to other stories widely publicized in the independent press (and published by AP), a small group of protesters who had planned to simply turn their backs on Bush during his speech were directly warned in the same way that this would be considered “disturbing the peace.”
“There, quite honestly, were concerns about hecklers,” university spokeswoman Amy Murray told The Plain Dealer. “You don’t want the president to come to your event and be heckled.”
Well, jeez, that seems like a good reason to do something like quash political protest.
“We just didn’t want to make this a political event; it’s a graduation,” Murray said. “We wanted to do everything we could to keep the focus on our graduates and not move it to the views against our speaker.”
If you don’t want graduation to be a poltical event, it might be advisable to not invite a politician.
Yeesh.
Or, as the local ACLU spokesperson said:
“If an event has a political component, say heckling the president, that is very much protected speech. The purpose of allowing the president to speak in our system is to allow him to convey his views. He should not be ensured or expected to have an enthusiastic audience.”
There are conflicting reports as to whether anyone who did actually stand up and turn their back was arrested (the “disturbing the peace” component evidently had to do with standing people blocking other people’s view — which, if a crime, would result in a lot more arrests ad movies and theaters across America). Some indy sources say that the few protesters who actually did it were escorted out of the graduation by the police, under threat of arrest, though no actual arrests were made; a pity, since I’d have loved to see someone try to make that charge stick.
UPDATE: SpinSanity has some deflated descriptions of what happened. It still sounds like OSU was a bit heavy-handed, but it was hardly the jackbooted police state that some of the lefty-indy types were claiming.