A handful of conservative students who set up a display in support of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and due process, soon found themselves surrounded by dozens of enraged protesters, who shouted them down and eventually ripped up their signs until campus security escorted the conservative students away from the at times extremely tense scene.
At around 11 a.m. Tuesday on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, members of the Young Conservatives of Texas set up a pro-Kavanaugh/pro-due process display, complete with signs reading “No Campus Kangaroo Courts in Congress,” “KavaNotGuilty,” and “#MeToo gone #TooFar.” The students said that they had hoped to have some conversations with their fellow students, but that became increasingly difficult about an hour after they arrived.
“We did want people to talk to us, but unfortunately it’s hard to do that when you have an angry mob ripping our signs and screaming in our faces,” the club’s vice chairman Anthony Dolcefino told The College Fix.
“At the peak we had 150 people out there recording, screaming, rioting,” Dolcefino said. “The UTPD got involved, making sure people were not coming behind us.”
As videos posted on social media show, the crowd of protesters, which swells to large numbers, angrily denounces the YCT students for supporting Kavanaugh, at times chanting “We believe survivors!” and “F*** YCT!” and calling for them to be kicked off campus. The College Fix reports:
One student told the conservatives if they did not want their signs ripped up they should not have written such offensive things. Another video shows a protester violently grab signs out of the conservative students’ hands and rip them up before coming around their table and getting in their faces. Dolcefino said at one point one of their members was shoved as she had her sign snatched away.
“It is despicable and wrong for people to be here trying to uplift a man who is clearly a perpetrator of assault,” one of the protesters told The College Fix.
Dolcefino told the outlet that they decided it was necessary to wrap up the event after about two hours, with campus police, who were there de-escalating things throughout the confrontation, eventually escorting them safely away.
Videos below: