Protesters at the University of California, Berkeley, that have been acting out against the Michael Brown and Eric Garner grand jury decisions disrupted an event at the school featuring PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel Wednesday.
About 50 protesters entered an auditorium where Thiel was answering questions from Berkeley students and community members in the audience, prompting the entrepreneur to cut the event short and leave the room, according to the Daily Californian.
Despite phone calls and e-mails in advance of the event expressing concern for potential protester disruptions, Berkeley Forum President Pierre Bourbonnais explained that he did not anticipate such a debilitating demonstration.
“We honestly didn’t think the protests would interfere,” said Bourbonnais. “It’s pretty unimaginable and unfortunate. I’m in support of free speech, but this is not the right venue for that. I’m very disappointed.”
According to Bourbonnais, the protesters entered the room, shouted “No police state — no NSA!” and stormed the auditorium stage.
Luckily, Thiel was finished delivering his speech, but the question-and-answer portion of the event was cut short due to the protests.
Unsurprisingly, Berkeley students expressed their anger at the demonstration.
“I can’t believe that [the protesters] thought that this was a politically acceptable way [to protest],” said freshman Jacob Bergquist. “It made me very angry, because some of the people [in the audience] came because they’re just trying to make an impact on the the world.”
Junior Jonathan Lin called the protest “inappropriate” and “disrespectful.”
“It’s not that a lot of the people here disagree with their mission statement — it’s that we feel that it was inappropriate for them to come in and disrupt an event,” Lin explained. “It was disrespectful for them to disrupt Mr. Thiel.”
Protests have enveloped the university and surrounding areas for several days as demonstrators express their outrage at the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police.
