When an activist evangelical group confronted students at DePauw University last week, screaming that they were “whores” and “sinners,” it didn’t take long for tensions to escalate. What happened that afternoon illustrates the challenges campuses face in balancing free speech and campus safety at a time of heightened cultural and racial tensions.
Janeya D. Cunningham, a first-year student interested in political science, was studying in her dormitory on Wednesday when her roommate told her to come outside. Snapchat videos from Ms. Cunningham’s friends already at the scene showed a gathering crowd of students as members of the activist group, known as Campus Ministry USA, screamed taunts. The videos soon appeared on BuzzFeed.
The group was small — just five “preachers,” as they call themselves — but within two hours their shouts had sparked a counterprotest of more than 100 students and staff members. Ms. Cunningham was among the counterprotesters, and she said many students missed class to join the response, drawing messages on sidewalks, holding rainbow flags and signs that read “We Are All Human” and “Love Wins,” blasting music, and chanting, “The only thing we have to lose are our chains.” Though the students were a diverse crowd, it was “the African-American community of DePauw that really took up the fight,” said Nicole J. DeCriscio, editor in chief of The DePauw, a student-run newspaper.
University officials also joined the scene, including Brian W. Casey, president of the Greencastle, Ind., institution, and officers from the campus, city and state police stood as a physical barrier between opposing viewpoints. The activists stood on a corner just off campus property. As such, the police could not tell them to leave.
Some students and staff members were crying, Ms. DeCriscio said. A white female student threw a cup of coffee at the group, and the police restrained her. Campus police officers shut down the intersection.
The situation grew even more tense — and, for some, took on racial overtones — when a sophomore, Avery Nash, attempted to approach the front lines of the protest, and Andrew Smith, assistant director for alumni engagement, stepped in to protect him, according to Mr. Smith’s Facebook page. Officers with the Greencastle City police detained the two men, who are both African-American, pushing them to the ground, confirmed Angela Nally, director of public safety at DePauw. No arrests were made. The Greencastle police department did not respond to requests for comment.
Witnesses offer conflicting versions of the incident and what led up to it. The DePauw reported that Mr. Nash had approached an officer because of frustration with the police response to the events. Witnesses told the student newspaper that an officer had grabbed Mr. Nash but that Mr. Nash had not touched him.
Ms. Cunningham, in an interview with The Chronicle, said she heard members of the Campus Ministry group say, “Black lives don’t matter.”
Jed Smock, founder of Campus Ministry USA, however, said the statements of people in his group were taken out of context and misheard. They were emphasizing that “not only black lives matter, all lives matter,” he said, including the lives of police officers and the unborn.
The scene was captured and shared on social media.
“I have never seen such hate so close, ever in my life,” Ms. Cunningham said. “It’s one thing to let someone have freedom of speech. It’s another thing to let students be harassed on our own campus. I feel like a lot of things could have been done better to keep the protests from escalating the way they did.”
Mr. Casey, the university’s president, said that DePauw’s leaders didn’t know the group was coming and that students on the small-town campus, compared to those at public, urban campuses, aren’t as familiar with such protesters. The conversation shifted, he said, when police officers held down Mr. Nash and Mr. Smith. “In students’ eyes, the real issue became interactions between law enforcement and community members,” Mr. Casey said.
“We’re going to continue doing work on campus about what these events are like and how to react and respond as a community,” he added. “Many of our students were specifically taunted and targeted, and that was extremely painful.”
Long-Standing Platform
Campus Ministry USA has visited college campuses across the country for more than 40 years with a practice that Mr. Smock named “confrontational evangelism.” Every school day, from noon to 5 p.m., Mr. Smock and a group of three to 10 others carry signs with phrases such as “You Deserve Hell” and preach against homosexuality, drug use, drinking, and sex. The group confronts students with its provocative messages at campuses nationwide; its use of sexist, racist, and homophobic slurs is a tactic to grab attention and get students to listen.
At DePauw, the group struck a particularly tense nerve, one that Mr. Smock called “the wildest response” he has had in 43 years of preaching. He hadn’t spoken at DePauw in 35 years, he said, but plans to return this week.
Campus Ministry USA is based in Terre Haute, Ind., and intends to appear this fall at other campuses in Indiana and neighboring states, including Northern Illinois University, the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and Michigan State University. The group has scheduled multiple visits to campuses of Indiana University, Indiana State University, and Purdue University. It also plans to visit campuses in Arkansas and Florida in November and December, according to its website.
Mr. Smock, who goes by Brother Jed, believes his confrontational style is most effective. He began college preaching in 1974 and is well known on campuses, said his wife, Cindy L. Smock. While he knows the group causes a stir, it gets people talking. “Jesus was confrontational,” Mr. Smock said. “People need to see their sin before they see the need for a savior. It’s similar to how a doctor needs to diagnose a disease before he starts talking about a cure.”
Officials at universities around Indiana and in neighboring states say their campuses see groups like Campus Ministry show up multiple times a year, and have ways of preparing students with announcements and administrative supervision. Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis makes sure administrators are available to monitor the crowds “just in case we need to step in if it’s gotten heated,” said Zebulun R. Davenport, vice chancellor for student affairs.
At Grand Valley State University, in Michigan, “extremist” groups are directed to open-forum areas with high traffic and sidewalk space, so that if a crowd gathers, people can avoid it, said H. Bart Merkle, vice provost for student affairs.
At Indiana State University, in Terre Haute, the campus police department has a long history of engagement with Campus Ministry USA. The university’s chief of police, Joseph M. Newport, remembers from his own student days, in the 1970s, his first encounter with Mr. Smock, and now sees the activist preacher on Indiana State’s campus three or four times each semester.
Mr. Newport said he met recently with Mr. Smock to discuss how to make the group’s visits to the campus safe for both parties. “He stays within limits of the law, no matter how disagreeable his messages are to other people,” said Mr. Newport, who puts the preacher’s group on a 12-inch platform behind a barricade to prevent physical interaction with students.
New students are always shocked by the group, the police chief said. Their first reactions are “what all of ours would be: offended by the language and accusations.” But after several visits, many students ignore the activists, and conflict decreases.
Mr. Newport said he emails students information about the visits with the knowledge that “once people understand the laws and get used to the group, they engage less often.” The police put up signs in 2014 announcing the group’s right to protected speech and students’ rights to listen civilly or walk away. After that, Mr. Newport noticed a drop in calls to his office.
A Community Responds
When asked whether Campus Ministry USA addresses issues of race, Mr. Smock said that is not part of the group’s intended gospel. “It was the students who brought race into it — chanting about Ferguson, getting involved with the police,” he said. “We don’t believe race is the issue. God’s grace is the issue.”
DePauw, like many campuses, has been criticized by some of its students for a lack of diversity and inclusion, said Christopher J. Wells, vice president for student life. A campus movement called “DePauw Doesn’t Care,” which began last year, called attention to what its leaders said was a lack of opportunity for minority students. This past spring semester, the university canceled classes for a day, at students’ request, for campus discussion connected to topics of diversity. The university’s Diversity and Equity Committee is developing a five-year plan connected with those conversations.
“The tragedy of the impact of a group like this, who modeled a particular kind of divisive hatred, is that it can be really derailing for constructive momentum,” Mr. Wells said. “My hope is that, as a campus, we’d be unlikely to give them much of what they’re looking for in the future, but this particular time they got a reaction.”
Mere hours after the Campus Ministry group had left the street corner near DePauw, Mr. Casey called a public forum on Ubben Quad, a central spot on the campus, to debrief and share opinions. Hundreds attended, the student newspaper reported. The conversation, which lasted for two hours, was sparked by the group’s visit and touched on the strength of DePauw’s community, but quickly moved to campus racial issues. Other subjects raised — faith, feminism, and LGBTQ inclusion — were shut down by students of color, Ms. DeCriscio said.
Ms. Cunningham, who is black, said that while the conversation was tense, there was also support and an acknowledgment of the need to continue to work together.
“Every single student I’ve seen has had a good heart and a good-intentioned, bright spirit,” said Ms. Cunningham. “I’m going to let people know that it doesn’t make sense to separate. We have to engage in conversation with one another.”
This was an opportunity, Mr. Wells said, for DePauw to come together as a community to “strategize how we grapple with issues, to respond to speech we don’t like that is very close to the heart of our campus.”