I have been meaning to post instructions on how to protest a speaker you don’t like for about three weeks now, but something else always came up. Yesterday the students at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida, beat me to it.
When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who was approved only by the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Pence, spoke at a college founded by the educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune, many of the graduating seniors sat with their backs to her.
My Uncle Eugene taught me this tactic years ago. I used it myself when Sen. Toomey spoke at Penn’s Peak. It is a non-violent protest that allows the speech to go on. Sen. Toomey never mentioned my back turning, but I have given enough speeches to know that a speaker is definitely aware of something like that.
Is it an insult? Of course it is, but Betsy DeVos, who knows absolutely nothing about education, the history of black colleges, or much of anything besides a desire to dismantle public education, is an insult to this country.
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