Another win for State sponsored Christianist Hate, brought to you by the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and the UTC Police Department.
UTC Student Arrested After He Rides His Bike Into Neutral Zone Between Female Evangelist, Students
A UTC student was wrestled to the ground and arrested on Friday after he rode his bicycle into a neutral zone set up between a female evangelist and UTC students near the University Center.
Cole Philip Montalvo, 24, was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, obstruction of justice and inciting a riot.
Take heart, though, as it's a legit arrest.
UTC officials said she has a right to be on campus as long as she fills out a form saying when she is coming.
Officials said Montalvo was told numerous times not to ride up close to the evangelist.
No word yet on students' rights to
be free from hate or be free from the use of excessive force by campus Police who are ostensibly there to protect them...
From HuffPo's aggregated story 11/17/13
A student at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga was forced from his bicycle and charged with inciting a riot Thursday for crossing a coned perimeter around a campus preacher. Now students are calling on the administration to ban the evangelist from campus.
Cole Philip Montalvo, 24, was arrested when he attempted to rebuke Angela Cummings, a woman who is not a student but has been open air preaching at the UTC campus recently. Onlooking students captured footage, which was uploaded to LiveLeak and YouTube, where a description reads:
Several times over the past couple weeks UTC has allowed and endorsed a fire and brimstone preaching fanatical woman to come and scream hate and damnation at its students. They provided her a huge coned in circle with security and police to judge their students. Before any amount of a crowd had gathered this unknown student rode his bike past the barrier unknowing the swift consequences that would follow.
Now, one could argue that the University was doing the right thing by creating a "zone" around this jackass to protect her from student ire. After all, it seems students were pretty fed up by her presence and the nastiness she was spreading and were clearly
becoming aggressive.
Montalvo's arrest is the most recent disturbance spurred by the spectacle of the provocative street preacher's multiday visit to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Hundreds of students have circled around Cummings, laughing, taunting, shouting, asking irreverent questions -- even singing songs such as "Why you gotta be so mean?" -- as Cummings makes such statements as "lesbo alert, lesbians are on this campus" and "there's a buffet table of sins and ... you go start indulging in them like a pig."
To protect Cummings' right to free speech, the campus has established a perimeter on Heritage Plaza around the street preacher marked with orange cones and patrolled by campus security guards.
In light of that student hostility, having police there to keep the peace makes perfect sense. I mean, her right to
harass speak to students at taxpayer expense
should be protected.
"Security is there for the speaker's protection and for our students' protection," UTC spokeswoman Cindy Carroll said Friday. "We are required by law to allow access to individuals with diverse ideas. A university should be a place where ideas -- even distasteful ones -- can be expressed and explored. The same protection that allows an individual to express one thought allows someone else to express an opposing opinion."
Unless, of course, that speech is student speech that occurs inside the protected Hate Speech Zone. Then it becomes a problem. What were Montalvo's word's that attempted to incite the crowd to riot?
"Hey ma'am. If you're trying to spread the good word, maybe you shouldn't be telling everyone they're sinners," Montalvo says on a video that the street preacher posted on her YouTube page. "Maybe you shouldn't be yelling at everyone, OK?"
That must have scared the "female evangelist" pretty badly, and the police as well. Coupled with trespassing into the zone of cones and being non-compliant I'm surprised he didn't get tazed for good measure.
Montalvo was arrested for disorderly conduct by UTC Police Sgt. Willie Trueitt, who wrote in an incident report that he told Montalvo five times to get back from the perimeter before arresting him. Trueitt sprayed Montalvo once with Mace, but missed his face, according to the report. On the video, Trueitt threatens to use a Taser.
Oh. Well, almost.
And who is this asshole female evangelist whose right to inform public university students of their impending eternities in Hell® the UTC is intent to protect? Her name is Angela Cummings, "a woman who is not a student but has been open air preaching at the UTC campus recently."
The link above goes to her webpage. I notice her Campus Ministry page is conspicuously empty while the rest of the website is pretty fleshed out...
From her Youtube page:
Published on Apr 12, 2013
God called me to preach 2/27/1999. I begin open air preaching May 2001. Since then more people get upset about the method I use to reach lost souls, then woman issue. Someone that has house on fire doesn't wait for a man to show up, if a woman is there to help. They are just grateful for being saved from fire. This week, I had dealt with this TOO much. So, putting this out there. Be Ye offended, if it bothers you.
Guess she knows folks might be offended by her all-too-familiar hateful content. Students at UTC are pretty familiar with this kind of message on campus. Hate preachers are apparently
there all the time.
"They always talk about the same things -- how horrible we all are, how we're living in our sins and will go to hell, and general condemnations against people of other races or sexual preferences," Fjeld wrote in a Facebook message to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. She said students also have been handed Jack Chick religious comic tracts. Its website offers such titles under "false religions" as "Are Roman Catholics Christian?" and warns "Islam is trying to take over."
Fjeld wrote, "If someone spoke to our school as a member of any other hate organization I do not think UTC would allow it, and I find it incredibly repugnant that they allow these people to come to our campus day after day."
But as a public institution, the school is "required by law to allow access to individuals with diverse ideas", remember? They have no choice! Students should maybe just Let Go and Let God, don't you think? Since UTC doesn't have any choice in the matter, students need to step the hell off and just accept the fact that female preachers happen.
Or not. Here's the petition at Change.org
"By allowing this woman to scream in the middle of our campus, UTC is not properly delivering the service we have paid for," the petition reads. "We do not pay to have a large section of our campus cut off from us. We do not pay to have some stranger scream at us and tell us that we're going to hell. Our campus is no place for her hatred."
Dr. Joe DiPietro, President of the University of Tennessee
Link has the necessary phone numbers. I'm going to bed. Maybe some industrious Kossack can dig up numbers for their Board or other such influential somebodies that might like to hear from some DFH's. I'm off to work.
Yours in total irritation and disgust,
- bastrop
UPDATE: This diary has been corrected to reflect the fact that the preacher DOES have a right to be there and to speak. The issue is not her speech, it is the police response.
Now, did the student go overboard? Yes, he did. The police could have and should have handled this differently. AT some point, and if the student reached that point is debatable, the may have to use force, but it should be proportionate. Their response was not proportionate.
I wrote this late at night, was tired, and wasn't thinking clearly as I wrote. That is no excuse for sloppy thinking, though, so I am correcting that here and now.