Spring is here and with the slightly less rainy weather, Portland State students might be inclined to take their studying outside. The South Park Blocks, with the green grass, big oaks and elms are a lovely place to spend an afternoon studying—if you can put up with loud angry yelling about Jesus and why your soul needs all of the help it can get.
The Park Blocks are a public place and freedom of speech allows everyone—even angry annoying evangelical preachers—to speak their mind. Of course, freedom of speech is a wonderful and amazing right that we should celebrate and not take for granted, but sometimes it is just plain irritating.
PSU’s Park Blocks are a real asset to the community and the university. Not many cities or campuses have public spaces with art and flowers for all to use. A day spent lounging in the shady grass could be a sort of cheap version of a vacation for a college student. Too bad the peacefulness has been lacking recently.
A certain evangelical preacher shows up almost every weekday on the platform by Cramer Hall and he is loud and seemingly very angry. Many times students engage him by arguing, ensuing more anger on both parties. A student looking for a quiet place to study might not find it for several blocks; even heading into Smith Memorial Student Union doesn’t always insure being out of audible range.
This is a quandary because his free speech is disrupting many other people’s freedom to a quiet place to study. Why does this preacher have more right to disrupt than other people?
“I don’t have the right to party all night drinking beer with my friends—the cops show up—so why does he have the right to disrupt classes and study time?” said senior Dave Wissman in a recent Viking Voice.
Our laws give power to freedom of speech, which is a good thing, but it sometimes backfires, like in angry-preacher incidents here on campus. Enacting his freedom is a major nuisance to thousands of students who would like the freedom to utilize Portland State’s public outdoor space without hearing angry religious yelling. Don’t students have a right to quiet study spaces? It seems like we don’t.
All of the anger spewing forth from this man’s mouth adds a lot of negativity to a campus full of students with plenty of their own worries and problems. College can be stressful; grades, financial aid, newfound independence, rent, working and time management give the average college student plenty of stress. Adding more negativity is an unnecessary burden.
This specific preacher must mean well, as converting young people to see the ways of Jesus is at the very least noble in its intention, but what he is adding to PSU is a loud sense of confrontation. We simply just don’t need that. It is hard to understand why such yelling is warranted in regards to a subject that is supposed to be about love and not judging.
Converting many PSU students to Christianity seems like a tall order anyway. Portland has been hailed as being the most unreligious city in America by Portland Monthly Magazine on several different occasions. That explains why students gather and yell back at the loud and angry man. They seem to think it is a fun game to taunt his brand of religion openly. While this is slightly amusing, it is almost a bigger waste of time than is his angry preaching in the first place. Nobody is going to have their mind changed by an antagonist screaming in public.
In preparation for writing this piece I looked for the preacher last week so I could listen and talk quietly with him, but he was not there—at least not when I was. Perhaps his organization will replace him with someone who has a more positive message and is several decibels less intrusive. One can only hope. Free speech is great, but so is studying in our lovely Park Blocks.