Folks, don't feed the troll

Folks, don't feed the troll

By Chris LeBlanc

Executive Editor

Editorial Cartoon by Chris LeBlanc

What do you do when a petulant child throws a fit and makes wild accusations, or when an angry drunken friend tries to goad you into a fight? Better still, what do you do when someone on the internet makes inflammatory statements about you or something you care about? Do you give in? Do you feed the troll’s insatiable desire for attention? 

If so, you are as much to blame for the offensive behavior as the offending party.

The reason the angry little man stood out in the quad for hours on end last week, belching out absurd beliefs and making wild accusations is the same as the motivation for the internet troll or the insolent child… he wants attention.

The throngs of interested and insulted students gathering around this man’s makeshift pulpit are giving him the audience he so desperately desires.

Which leads my to my point. If you see/hear someone in the quad making an ass of himself, IGNORE HIM. He will stop and he will crawl back from the homophobic, misogynistic hole from whence he came.

Also, for all those castigating McNeese officials and police, they don’t want this loudmouth on campus anymore than you do. Police don’t want to have to protect the man rustling the collective feathers of the McNeese student body. And, I’m certain that university officials would rather not have a man who espouses religious vitriol and persecution to be, in any way, linked to the university at which they are employed.

However, the university is required by constitutional mandate to allow this man’s buffoonery, as long as they fit within the university’s “time, place and manner” requirements.

While it chafes when someone exercises their first amendment rights in a manner which offends us, he is still afforded the same rights and privileges as anyone else.

In fact, under all the sexism, homophobia and religious judgment, this man is teaching the somewhat lethargic population of McNeese students that individuals still have a voice.

If you have something to say --no matter how absurd or backward the message-- you have the right to be heard.

In spite of himself, this man actually has done some good for the student populace. Even if only for a few moments beneath the first beams of early spring sunlight, students of differing (sometimes competing) walks of life, races and sexual orientations stood shoulder-to-shoulder to oppose the vitriolic rantings of one man.

Was he wrong in essentially everything he said? Yes.

Was the outcome of what he said worth it? I think so.