When I was in college, my campus had a religious heckler. You know, one of those guys who stands in a free speech area with signs bearing the cross and God’s name and bitches bout how we’re all going to hell for having sex and drinking alcohol and blah blah blah. He called himself an “advocate for God,” but he was anything but. His name was Brother Jeb, and he was more of a laughing stock than a serious threat. One morning I was walking along side him, so I offered a casual, “Good morning, sir.” He looked me dead in the eye and told me, “Not for you, sinner.” And you know what? I had a good morning anyway. Because all this guy did was show me that he has nothing but hate in his heart, and all the terrible things he was saying didn’t make me feel bad about myself– I felt bad for him.
Kenzie Schaefer, a Kappa Gamma at the University of Arizona, is fed up with the preacher on her campus. His name is Dean Saxton, and he’s a proud virgin who feels the need to comdemn his fellow students in the name of Jesus. But unlike Brother Jeb, he doesn’t just condemn us to hell. No, this guy goes so far as to tell women that they deserve rape.
Late to class and already flustered from a busy morning, the last thing I wanted to deal with was brother dean, a deranged ‘advocate for God’ who ‘preaches’ around campus. As I was fighting my way through the crowd he had gathered, I heard him yelling comments about my dress, about how my dress was going to cause myself to get raped. I heard him yell that I DESERVED to get raped because of the dress that I am wearing on a particularly hot day in Tucson. While I am extremely proud of my school and feel very passionately towards it, these types of activities make me embarrassed to go here. I am enraged for us students paying upwards of $40k a year just to be sexually harassed on the way to class. I am enraged that there is security standing ready to protect brother dean in the case that HE gets attacked, as he is attacking each and every student walking by. I am very proud of my accomplishments thus far in college, and do not appreciate being told as I walk by that my father “hates me for dressing this way”. I do not appreciate being told that, because I am in a sorority, I am automatically deemed to “eternal damnation”. Most of all, I do not appreciate that the administration of my school allows such behavior to happen year after year.
First of all, I’m feeling very attacked right now, because yoga pants are every woman’s basic right. How dare he suggest that I am eternally damned for being a comfortable af feminist. I refuse to trade in spandex for denim, and he’s just going to have to get the fuck over it. On a more serious note, bearing signs that say “Sorority women are whores” and “You deserve rape” and “Frat boys are the rapists” is probably the most legal way of earning yourself a one-way ticket to hell. I don’t know what’s wrong with this man, but he clearly has some deeply rooted issues that he needs to sort out, a fact that is truly validated once you take a look at the trash on his Twitter account:
If you want to watch him talk shit on sororities/fraternities/muslims/people in general, you can watch this nifty little video and find out what actual human garbage looks and sounds like:
Dean Saxton is severely misguided if he honestly believes he’s an “advocate for God.” Not only does he preach the exact opposite of what bible says, but he makes genuinely kind-hearted religious people look bad. He gives Christianity a bad name, and if Jesus were here to see this, I seriously doubt he’d be like, “Fuck yeah, you tell ‘em, Dean. All these yoga pants-wearing bitches are tots going straight to hell.”
The worst part about these Bible-clad hecklers is that they disguise their persecution under the facade of free speech, which is what allows them to berate students daily. I’m all for free speech, and I’ll defend every American’s right to say what they feel until I’m cold and dead. But this doesn’t fall under freedom of expression; it’s harassment. Telling sorority women (or any women for that matter) that they deserve rape for merely being a woman and wearing a dress is not okay. It’s a very real threat, and the fact that college students have to deal with this sexual harassment on a daily basis is appalling.
I can’t wait for the day that college campuses figure out a way to dispel these freaks. Their messages are disheartening and uncalled for, and to verbally threaten the safety of women who are just trying to get to class is the lowest move possible. The university released this statement regarding Brother Dean’s antics to The Huffington Post:
The University of Arizona does not endorse or condone the message of the campus speaker – in fact, it considers it to be vile and repugnant. However, because universities in particular are bastions for free speech, even when it is offensive, the University of Arizona will uphold the right of this speaker and all others to engage in constitutionally protected speech on its campus. Should the University receive complaints or otherwise become aware of allegations of misconduct that fall outside the realm of constitutionally protected speech, it will investigate and deal with them as appropriate.
Forever waiting for him fuck up and do something illegal enough for the University to take action.
UPDATE:
Brother Dean has been arrested and banned from the campus for a year. I received an email tip explaining that on Tuesday, he was preaching when a freshman Alpha Epsilon Phi expressed her opposing views. Dean became aggressive and kicked her in the chest so hard she got the wind knocked out of her. He was detained half an hour later. Shoutout to this badass frosh who didn’t back down when he was spewing his ignorant rant. I’m sorry she had to suffer the wrath of a deranged loser, but she basically single-handedly got him kicked off campus. Bid. .
[via Huffington Post]
Image via Katherine Welles / Shutterstock.com
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Lucky Jo
Lucky Jo is a former and current TSM writer who likes her men how she likes her coffee: way too hot and unforgivably bitter. She graduated from the University of Missouri in 2016, proving that C's do in fact get degrees. She now spends her days working for a social media marketing agency, hiking with her dachshund, and trying to bring back the scrunchie. Hate mail and goat memes can be sent to lucyjmulvihill@gmail.com.
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