(Lorenzo Iraheta-Leon / Fourth Estate)

Christian group not affiliated with Mason garners campus-wide attention with offensive messaging

BY LORENZO IRAHETA-LEON AND ISABELLA PEARLSTEIN, STAFF WRITERS

Demonstrators holding signs that read “Trump Make America Great Again: Ban Homo Marriage” and a list of people who “Will Burn In Hell” drew a large crowd of students at Wilkins Plaza this afternoon.

The demonstrators, whose signs associated them with the Key of David Christian Center in Philadelphia, declined an interview with Fourth Estate.

Throughout the demonstration, organizers were shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs as well as directing hateful speech toward various groups of people, including the Jewish community. 

“These people are very clearly harassing others. Some of my friends were called the f-slur and other kinds of slurs,” Stan Moore, a freshman Global Affairs major, said. “I’m not here to get offended. I’m just here to make fun of them [and] kind of play along, but what they’re doing is truly awful and it’s one of the things I think is tearing this country apart.”

One of the demonstrators began listing groups of people they claimed they weren’t trying to reach. 

“[We] are not here to reach the white guys that apologize for saying the N-word,” he said, leading to shouts of outrage from the amassed students.

One student, Jasmin Wolf-Frias, a sophomore Government and International Politics major, yelled at the demonstrator, “If you’re proud of it, say it!” 

“They are here to evoke a reaction, that’s why I had the response I had,” Wolf-Frias told Fourth Estate. “They’ve become more emboldened…our current political climate is emboldening them to ride the coattails of the [current Trump] administration.”

“Despite being vocal, I don’t condone violence to these people … our solidarity with one another is more important than our opposition to them,” Wolf-Frias said. 

As the demonstrator continued listing groups of people they were not trying to reach with their messaging, a student attempted to throw a snowball at them. The snowball missed and hit another student, senior Physics major Timothy Hodge. 

Hodge then stepped to the side and grabbed a snowball, throwing it at the demonstrators before being escorted away from the protest by campus police who were on site monitoring the situation.

(Lorenzo Iraheta-Leon / Fourth Estate)

“One of the students behind me threw the snowball first that hit me, and so I felt inspired to continue that snowball toward their intended target,” Hodge explained.

“They’re up here [saying] a bunch of hate speech and [telling] everybody they’re going to go to hell, [just] disparaging a bunch of different groups of people,” he said.

According to Hodge, campus police then spoke with the demonstrator who was nearly hit by the snowball. He did not move to press charges against Hodge.

One of the demonstrators wore a hat saying “Jesus is Alive.” Others held signs with Bible passages and phrases like “Obey Jesus or Hellfire.”

(Lorenzo Iraheta-Leon / Fourth Estate)

Maggie Cook, a sophomore Nursing student, said she disagreed with the Christian framing of the demonstrators. 

“I want to say to them, ‘Jesus would never say these things, calling people slurs or saying people will go to hell.’ Clearly they’re insanely radical,” Cook said.

While the demonstrators kept speaking, the crowd of students began chanting, “The people united will never be defeated!” in an attempt to drown out the discourse.  

Students began confronting the demonstrators one-on-one, holding out their phones and chanting “Say how you feel!”

Around 2 p.m., Facilities and Campus Operations brought in barricades to put space between the demonstrators and students. The crowd began to dwindle an hour later.

Max Archie, a freshman at the Costello College of Business, said he enjoyed the demonstrators’ ability to bring unity to Mason’s campus.

“Shout out to George Mason for being such an awesome, diverse community, and I think it’s a little poetic how these two crazy white men’s hate for everyone has unified the campus and brought everyone together,” Archie said. “That’s really beautiful.”

“The campus students here [are] a community and we want to protect one another as opposed to villainizing or coming with hate the way that they do.” Wolf-Frias said.