In Texas, one of the types of disorderly conduct is:
Use of abusive language in a public place:
(a) A person commits an offense if he intentionally or knowingly:
(1) uses abusive, indecent, profane, or vulgar language in a public place, and the language by its very utterance tends to incite an immediate breach of the peace
Also inlcuded are things such as creating an offensive smell.
When I used to do security in bars, use of abusive language was something we would tack on all the time to someone who was really being an asshole that we had detained and turned over to the deputies. It actually is a pretty common thing to get charged with in Texas, although more often the officer justs writes a ticket for it.
I have a friend who after a cop hit him with a flashlight said “fuck” and he was given such a ticket (but not arrested).
If you follow the link to Raj’s statement about the incident you’ll see he says that he put on his performance during the Q&A phase, and he was one in a line of questioners taking their turn to speak. He mentions questioners preceding him and others in line behind him. So he was legitimately in place to speak to her at that time.
I’ll have all the people calling Ann Coulter bad names know that she’s America’s most respected conservative commentator. If you doubt the veracity of that claim I advise you to read the first line of this article.
Well, if you want the actual police report about what went on, check out The Smoking Gun. The actions of the person in question are decribed as follows by the arresting officer:
Make of that what you will. This police report does not seem to me to indicate quite the level of constant and ongoing disruption on the part of the arrested person that has been assumed in this thread. If we take this report at face value, he was arrested because he used a vulgar word and gesture, and because everyone else in the audience (supporters and opponents alike) felt the need to applaud or jeer him.
When Coulter lectured at my school, she often had to stop her speech and wait for applause from her sycophants to die down. Is cheering when you agree with a particular point any more or less disruptive than jeering when you disagree? Although, to be fair, if we allowed jeering whenever Coulter said something stupid, she’d never be able to get more than two sentences into a talk.
Technical semantic quibble, regarding asking Ann “Anne of Green Goebbels” Coulter a question regarding her own proclivities as to anal sex: does a penile penetration of a cloaca qualify?
I think what this guy did was awesome. And I think he deserved to be arrested for it. I’ve got a great respect for civil disobedience, but if you’re going to play that game, you’ve got to pay the price.
Sounds like he was being disruptive to me and deserved to get arrested. Between the police report and the student’s own comment (quoted by Bricker) about “From the beginning I was yelling obscenities along with my friends,” what question is there about his intent?
I’m right there with you, buddy. The college movements that degenerated into the hippies in the 60’s & 70’s and the punks in the 70’s & 80’s were started by kids like Ajai Raj. I think it takes balls to stand up to tyrrany in any form, even a ridiculous harpy like Ann Coulter.
Disorderly conduct is against the law. The kid broke the law and got arrested. Big friggin’ deal. How is disrupting a speech “civil disobedience?” Civil disobedience means disobeying an unjust law. How is disrupting a controversial speakers speech disobeying an unjust law? To even imply that this brat’s behavior is even remotely similar to, say, the blacks who refused to obey segration laws, is stupid and offensive.
Reading the kids letter in the link Seven provided does nothing to temper my opinion about this kids flagrant asshattery. He comes off as a pompous self-righteous jerk incapable of the least bit of self examination or reflection.
FTR, I loathe Ann Coulter and think she is just as much of a jerk as the kid in question. Frankly the two deserve each other. Maybe they’ll get married.
Ann Coulter holds no office and has no power other than her words. To call her a “tyrant” is so incredibly stupid there are no words. To compare some idiot college student disrupting a speech to the men and women who died resisting real tyranny and injustice is incredibly offensive.
I can’t speak positively for a university I didn’t attend, but they probably did. The link in the OP - which also makes it clear he wasn’t just arrested for saying “fuck” one time - describes the speech as a “$30,000 event” co-sponsored by student groups.
I consider civil disobedience to be more about disregarding law(s) to make a political statement, and then accepting the consequences of breaking that law. The purpose isn’t to say, “This particular law is unjust” so much as “What I have to say needs to be said, whatever the consequences.” Obviously, swearing at Ann Coulter isn’t much of a political statement, and I doubt his antics are at all effective, but I admire the spirit, at least. And, after all, it’s only Ann Coulter. It may have been a stupid and worthless protest, but they do say that like draws to like…
Anyway, I agree that there’s no big outrage that the kid got arrested. He spends the night in jail, goes back to his dorm the next day, and spends the rest of the semester hip-deep in pussy as “The guy who got arrested for telling Ann Coulter to fuck off.” Which is, without a doubt, the prime motivation behind his protest. I imagine if they hadn’t arrested him, he’d have been pissed as hell. The way I see it, everyone wins in this scenario. The kid gets laid, the audience is able to watch the rest of the lecture in relative peace, Ann gets a new anecdote for his next essay on why everyone to the left of Genghis Khan needs to be surgically sterilized, and all of us on the SDMB get to be outraged when the column gets printed. Everybody’s happy!
Well, Ann Coulter spoke at my school a couple of years back, and i know they paid her a pretty penny to come. It also was an event co-sponsored by student groups and a special symposium budget that the university provides. But admission to the event itself was free of charge.
Actually, while the link quotes a “former Student Events Center president” as saying that “The person had been disruptive the entire event,” the only thing it tells us about the specific reason for his arrest was that he was charged with “disorderly conduct, a Class C misdemeanor.”
To determine what he was actually arrested for, i’ll stick with the police report itself, which i quoted above.
None of this is to say that the arrest was illegal or unwarranted. It’s just to point out that, as far as the official documentation of the event goes, any earlier heckling or shouting that he engaged in was not mentioned at all as a reason for his arrest. My father’s a retired cop (admittedly in Australia) and whenever he arrested someone he was meant to include in his report a description of all the actions leading to the arrest. I’d be surprised if it were different in Texas.
