Campus preachers need to keep their evangelizing in Free Speech Plaza.
As college students, we have a lot on our plates. Midterms are coming up. TOPS is being drawn and quartered in the Legislature.
The University’s most important job is to provide a stable and reliable learning environment where we can go to class and do our work in peace. Frankly, students don’t have time or energy to deal with unwanted attempts at conversion.
So when someone steps out of the throng of college kids buzzing through the Quad to push little Psalm books and Hare Krishna manuals, they’ve disrupted my day in a way that was unnecessary and avoidable.
Campus preachers use tactics that are nothing more than a way to reach us college students who purposefully avoid Free Speech Plaza. We created the alley to avoid your message, so resist the strong temptation to venture into other areas of campus to spread your message.
Students who are tired and aggravated from irrelevant lectures, are certainly not excited to engage in a sudden religious conversation. So preachers, please go spread the good news of Jehovah to someone who doesn’t have four tests and three papers due in one week. At the very least, stay in front of Free Speech Plaza and don’t follow me to my classes.
The unexpected conversation surprises students, and the missionaries (let’s call them what they are) use that second of confusion to spout their unwanted message.
Camouflage is an important element of their tactics. The Hare Krishna monks walk around dressed like liberal college hippies so they can get close enough to draw those books out of their satchel and strike up a conversation about meditation and Krishna.
The Christian missionaries dress nicer — slacks and button-down shirts — and tend to be more stationary, handing out prayer booklets where there is common foot traffic. They greet you with a warm smile and pass those books to you before you realize what you are taking.
Just what I wanted: my own little Old Testament Psalm Book. This will definitely help me in my exams. Thank you.
And because tensions have been so high on campus recently, the people who leave Free Speech Plaza to preach are potentially adding new and unnecessary stress to students — a fact I am sure these people are not ignorant of. Who could be a better convert than a stressed out, emotionally raw and potentially vulnerable college student?
So what we end up with is a predatory preacher scouting out students to lure them into a certain religion. We can easily resolve this ridiculous problem by putting religious speakers, preachers, evangelizers and monks of all denominations in Free Speech Plaza. And do not let them out.
We could build a wall.
This rule should include those espousing political messages, as well. Campus is a place for active engagement, but people come to college to go to class, not to get preached at.
I don’t mind religion on campus. Students can take time in college to develop their spirituality. However, the University is a state-run, secular institution. Religion on campus belongs in clubs, churches, relevant classes and Free Speech Plaza, where people can scream their opinions as loud as they want for as long as they want.
David Schneider is a 20-year-old religious studies sophomore from New Orleans, Louisiana.