A conservative student at the University of Buffalo says she was forced to hide in a men’s bathroom after a mob of angry student protesters disrupted an event featuring conservative speaker Allen West.
Therese Purcell, the president of conservative student group Young Americans for Freedom at the University of Buffalo, helped organize a campus lecture by West last week that devolved into chaos after a group of student protesters disrupted the event.
Purcell said she fled to the men’s bathroom out of fear for her life. West required a police escort to leave the lecture hall.
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“They were a very angry mob, and they were clearly saying that they were trying to chase me, that they wanted to capture me,” Purcell said in an appearance on Fox News Monday. “I’m afraid of what would have happened if I wasn’t able to hide from them.”
The event was sponsored by Young America’s Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes conservative principles to students. YAF said the reaction from students was proof that such events by conservative speakers are necessary.
“This despicable attack on conservative students prove exactly why YAF’s campus lectures are needed––to pop the liberal bubble and expose the hideous reality of the intolerant Left,” YAF spokeswoman Kara Zupkus wrote in a post on the organization’s website.
According to YAF, West’s speech proceeded without any problems from the protesters, but the situation grew tense during a Q&A period that saw student protesters insulting West and attempting to take control of the audience microphone.
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Purcell said she didn’t think West’s lecture, titled “America Is Not Racist,” would be controversial.
“I didn’t think it was going to be as controversial … to say on an American campus that American values are a good thing,” she said. “American values are worth protecting. I don’t think they like Col. West’s message that he did experience racism … but he overcame that, and he decided not to be a victim … and that America gave him that equality of opportunity that many other countries don’t.”
