ISLA VISTA – More than 20 UC Santa Barbara students disrupted the start of a talk on campus in support of traditional marriage on Tuesday night with a rowdy protest that included loud chanting and crassly worded signs.

The demonstrators – who wore black shirts with pink balloons stating “Queer” – stood up as soon as the talk began and continually chanted “ain’t no power like the power of people ‘cuz the power of people don’t stop.”

The row of protestors blocked the view of the stage as they continued their demonstration. Several students held signs that offered phrases such as “Anal is the most inclusive form of f*cking,” “There is a Future in Sodomy,” “God Loves Fags,” and more.

The featured speaker – Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, a former Ivy League professor and founder and president of the pro-traditional marriage nonprofit Ruth Institute – left the stage and attempted to engage the protestors in conversation, but they would not stop shouting.

The chanting lasted for about four or five minutes, then the protestors marched out of the lecture hall, allowing the event to continue without disruption. After the protestors left, about 45 students, scholars and community guests remained and listened to Morse’s lecture:“Same Sex Marriage: Why Not?”

The talk was sponsored by the newly formed UCSB Anscombe Society, which aims to promote sexual purity and the traditional family on campus.

Morse works to help what she calls the Sexual Revolution’s victims. Morse taught economics at Yale and George Mason universities for 15 years and also served as a research fellow for Stanford University’s Hoover Institution from 1997 to 2005.

The event had been highly publicized through an email to the 20,000-member campus community as well as through fliers hung on doors at dorms and apartment complexes near the university.

“Whatever one’s views on this very important and contested question may be, we invite and encourage all to attend to critically interact with the speaker’s arguments and to ask tough questions during the Q&A in the interest of encouraging intellectual engagement on this issue,” the Anscombe Society’s invitation to the campus community had stated.

As this was the Anscombe Society’s first official event, it was uncertain how many people would show up. Campus officials had asked society members to purchase security for the talk. However, after the group’s student president, Carlos Flores, got an attorney involved, the fees were dropped, he told The College Fix.

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A nationwide survey of self-identified Jewish students found that a majority of them, 54 percent, had suffered or witnessed incidents of anti-Semitism on their campuses in the last school year.

At the University of California Santa Barbara, that problem has manifested itself in a variety of ways this year, offering a case study, a microcosm of sorts, of the larger issue at hand.

Last October, flyers blaming Jews for 9/11 were discovered on the UCSB campus. They alleged “9/11 was an outside job” and that “9/11 was Mossad,” referring to Israel’s intelligence agency.

The incident prompted a student government resolution denouncing anti-Semitism, but the effort had little effect.

Rabbi Evan Goodman, Santa Barbara Hillel’s leader, recalls a student earlier this year who came to him, upset because after walking home from an event with a small Israeli flag in her hand she was harassed multiple times, with students hurling insults at her for being pro-Israel and Jewish.

In the weeks leading up to a recent student government vote on whether to divest from Israel, Students for Justice in Palestine erected a protest wall condemning Israel’s “Apartheid.”  It was placed in the Arbor—the free speech zone— and students and professors were forced to walk around it to continue on the pathway.

Goodman argued that the wall itself was anti-Semitic, since “Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people” and “to single out one Jewish country in the world for special condemnation that would be not given to any other country in any other situation, is anti-Semitic.”

At first, the protest wall was placed in such an intrusive way that emergency vehicles would not be able to pass through campus, and the fire department got involved. “The university in the end had to spend student dollars to move the wall from where it was placed originally,” Goodman said.

Several Jewish students at UCSB voiced frustration over the “wall” in interviews with The College Fix.

Sophomore Eric Lendrum said he felt disgusted by the demonstration, not the least of which because SJP put it up during Passover, the holiest time of the year for the Jewish people. He also accused the display of “blatant lies and out-of-context ‘facts’ regarding Israel and its defense forces.”

That sentiment was echoed by UCSB junior Margaux Gundzik, (pictured) who said the wall was essentially accusing Israelis of racism and oppression, a far cry from reality.

“First of all, there is no apartheid in Israel,” she said. “The ‘wall’ is actually just a security fence. Only a small portion of the fence is a real wall, and that portion was built in an area where there had been a large number of terror attacks carried out by Hamas and other terrorists coming from the Palestinian territories. And it’s worked since they’ve stopped hundreds of suicide bombers since they built it.”

To counter the anti-Israel wall, StandWithUs, a non-profit that aims to support Israel internationally, brought in a pro-Israel wall advocating for the Israeli people.

Rather than taking quotes out of context, pulling words out of larger quotes, and treating the conflict like a sporting event with a death tally, the counter-protest wall took a positive approach. It displayed panels titled “Palestinians Deserve Better From Their leadership,” “Israeli Arabs Enjoy More Freedom In Israel Than In Any Arab country,” “Teach Peace,” and more.

Shortly after the dueling walls, the student government debated a resolution to divest from Israel. That’s when a flurry of anti-Semitic comments were made.

“We heard at the divestment hearing a variety of insults that veered into anti-Semitic imagery and language,” Goodman said. “In particular, one gay student spoke up about how Israel was a terrible place for people who are gay or lesbian, and that it is better for them in other Middle East countries. The comments were made anti-Semitic when he said Israel wants to be friendly to gays because the country wants to take the money of people who they normally wouldn’t be friendly toward to gain more money from tourism.”

“It’s so absurd it’s laughable, but you say a lie enough times and people believe it.”

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There are a lot of problems at Cal State University Long Beach. Parking is a nightmare. Many classes are overcrowded. Resources are spread thin as talk of hiking tuition rates looms.

Yet in the midst of these cash-strapped times, the campus recently launched a “Dream Success Center,” which aims to help undocumented students get a higher education with the help of taxpayer dollars.

One College Republican student leader at the school is taking a stand against that decision.

Cal State University Long Beach College Republican Chairman Nestor Moto, Jr., recently voiced objections to the new center. He says the public money used to fund the initiative should instead go to causes that help the campus as a whole, such as shrinking overcrowded classes or offering more counselors for all students.

While he lobbies to get the center closed, some have ridiculed Moto and pledged to fight back. Others have accused the young Republican student of being misguided in his efforts.

The Dream Success Center, which opened March 9 at the public university, gives undocumented students access to a vast amount of resources, ranging from academic advising to help with securing student loans and financial assistance referrals. Its mission is “to empower scholars who are undocumented in their pursuit of higher education and foster a supportive campus community dedicated to their educational and personal success.”

The cost to run the center, which is staffed with a full-time coordinator to help the school’s 650 undocumented students, is nearly $80,000 a year, The Daily 49er campus newspaper reports. The renovation to prepare the space also cost about $16,000, The 49er reported.

Moto told The College Fix in an email interview that money has been misspent.

“We have 10 advising centers and that is who the money should have been allocated to,” Moto said. “I emailed the university’s president and she stated that the advisors are able to assist all students. However, this center was specifically built for these individuals, while everyone else is stuck with the resources available to them.”

When Moto initially spoke out on the center, he voiced concern that the school did not have counselors for veterans, telling Fox and Friends: “We have 530 veterans on our campus and we have zero counselors available to them. The undocumented immigrants, they have one counselor available to them.”

“That’s the main issue, the fact that the faculty and this administration wanted to allocate the resources and the funds to illegal immigrants instead of our veterans, instead of our disabled students, instead of our actual students that paid taxpayer dollars for this.”

The school does in fact have a veteran’s resource center staffed with four workers to help the school’s 530 veterans, The Daily 49er campus newspaper reports. Moto stresses, however, that the money should be allocated to campuswide initiatives, not undocumented students.

But that position is not universally popular on campus. On a CSULB Facebook group, one peer called Moto’s comments “disgraceful,” adding “Mr. Moto should remove himself from this group for his dishonest attack on CSULB as it dishonors the discipline of political science … lying about the legal status of fellow student’s citizenship to falsely attack our university in order to build up his own notoriety shows a severe lack of integrity on Mr. Moto’s part.”

Another suggested Moto is just “spreading his agenda.” A third student put it more bluntly: “F*ck his racist, Republican, white supremacist ideology guiding his vision.” The same student also went on to argue that “migrant peoples pay taxes everyday through purchases, rent, etc.”

A comment on The 49er’s Facebook page by another CSULB student agreed that Moto’s efforts are misplaced.

“The least we can do for our fellow community members here at CSULB is to provide a resource that makes their lives just a tad bit less complicated until this country wakes up and realizes that its undocumented population is deeply ingrained into American society rather than try to wish them away,” the student posted.

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