Collegio Online

Issue date: 10/9/08 Section: Front Page

Media Credit: Katie Swatek Students Josh Poovy and Drue Barton try to refute Rev. Matt Bourgault during his controversial sermon in the Oval on Wednesday, Oct. 8.

Media Credit: Katie Swatek Matt Bourgault of Consuming Fire Campus Ministries preaches to a crowd in the Oval. He travels to different campuses with his "confrontational evangelism" in an RV with his six children and his wife

Rev. Matt Bourgault from Consuming Campus Fire Ministries keeps the campus and Pittsburg police on guard for four hours while he delivers a controversial sermon to Pittsburg State students in the Oval on Wednesday, Oct 8

Media Credit: Katie Swatek Ashley Taylor holds up a variety of signs during the controversial sermon preached by Matt Bourgault on Wednesday, Oct. 8.

The heat of Wednesday afternoon matched the high tension in the Oval as a crowd of more than 100 students came to investigate the noise being made by Matt Bourgault, a traveling open-air evangelist with Consuming Fire Campus Ministries in Kinard, Fla.
"I heard chanting from the dining hall, and came over to see what was happening," Adam Diskin, junior in advertising, said.
The chanting was coming from the crowd of students, most of whom were gathered to protest Bourgault's preaching. His message focused on condemning common college student behavior, such as consumption of alcohol, pre-marital sex, smoking and drugs and rejection of Christianity through similar actions.
Students continued filtering in and out of the Oval where Bourgault was preaching from noon until a little after 3 p.m. when he was escorted from campus by the campus police, but a steady crowd of students never had fewer than 50 students listening, shouting and booing at Bourgault during the afternoon.

Student reactions

Also occupying the Oval were members of various student groups who had scheduled events for the day, particularly members of Sexual Assault Response Team, Students against Violence Through Education, and Men Against Violence Program. The groups had been in the Oval to raise awareness for Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
"He's ruining the cause. He's making a spectacle of himself, reeling around the Oval like a clown," Ashley Taylor, senior in psychology, said. "No one is paying attention to what we're trying to do because he's up there screaming."
Members were particularly frustrated with Bourgault's preaching because of its sexist commentary, which stood in direct opposition to SART, SAVE and MVP's message of empowering women who had been victims of domestic abuse.
"Women should get accustomed to wearing an apron in the kitchen," Bourgault said.
But the student organizations were the tip of the iceberg for those offended by Bourgault's invective. Josh Dooley, senior in history education, said he was agitated by the preacher and his aggressive methods.
"He's picking out certain groups of people: people that drink, people that smoke, people that have a different sexual orientation. We're all diverse for a reason," Dooley said angrily. "Diversity is what makes the world go round. Without a diverse population, nothing could happen. He's standing up there telling me we should all be one type of person."
In a heated exchange, Bourgault asked Dooley if he was married, to which Dooley replied that he was homosexual. After this point, Bourgault began referring to Dooley specifically as a "sodomite" and "homo."
"I'm a person!" Dooley shouted back.
Some of the strongest opposition to Bourgault, however, came from members of Christian organizations on campus, such as Campus Christians.
"You're supposed to confront people that say they're Christians and they're preaching the wrong word and destroying the chance of anybody else becoming a Christian and be saved," Drue Barton, junior in pre-med, said. "It makes it harder on other Christians to spread out and teach the gospels."
Barton, along with Josh Poovey, sophomore in secondary education, was directly in front of Bourgault for most of the time he was preaching, often yelling back at him and quoting Bible passages to support their views. At one point, Poovey jumped up on the bench with Bourgault and the pair quoted Bible verses back and forth, Bourgault's condemning sin and Poovey's promoting love of people over judgment of them.
"I was just speaking about what God put in my heart," Poovey said. "Maybe he's doing the same, but he's not helping us by preaching the bad news. It doesn't give people hope. So we need to do a better job outreaching, talking on campus."

Concerns for safety

Amid shouts of "Stop hiding behind your Bible and tell us the truth!" and "Too bad his mother wasn't pro-choice!" along with signs proclaiming "Go to class so you don't end up like this" and "Jesus is love," five campus police officers stood stationed around Bourgault to protect him from the crowd.
"We're basically here to protect him and protect the students, and make sure that no one gets angry with him and tries to get physical with him," Mike McCracken, chief of Campus Police, said as the crowd sang a round of "Jesus Loves Me" in the background. "Because of the size of the crowd, it's too much for one or two guys, so we just had a couple of extra guys called in."
McCracken says that Bourgault attempted to speak on campus on Tuesday, but he was asked to leave since he didn't have a permit from the university.
"He was here yesterday, but he hadn't gotten the authorization from Steve Erwin's office to be here," McCracken said. "He had to get proper authorization, which he got this morning, so that's why he's out here today. That's why he had to be asked to leave yesterday. He came out and started to talk and someone had called our office about it, so we responded and told him he needed to follow the policy if he was going to do this, and he did."
In spite of the police presence, a good deal of heckling both toward and from Bourgault took place, particularly in the form of name-calling. At one point, Taylor stood up on the bench and asked Bourgault if he was sinner. When he replied that he was not, Taylor began to lead the crowd in a chant of "Bull-sh--, bull-sh--!"
Continuing to speak to their message of nonviolence, members of SART, SAVE and MVP began raising the silhouette cutouts, which had been posted around the Oval to represent the number of men and women killed from domestic violence in Kansas, into the air above the crowd. They also handed out anti-violence bracelets, warning students "not to punch the preacher in the face."
Shortly after 3 p.m., the campus police escorted Bourgault from the campus, about an hour before his permit expired. Erwin, associate vice president of campus life and auxiliary services, says that the early cut-off was a result of the increasingly hostile crowd reactions Bourgault was eliciting.
"We did finally disperse it at about 3 o'clock, an hour short of what he had requested, only because it felt like the crowd was growing large," Erwin said. "That wasn't as much of a concern as the noise that had risen from the exchange. There were also some things coming out of the crowd in terms of language that might actually be prohibited by statute that we wouldn't necessarily want to confront or make arrests on if it were to continue, so we decided to disband it."

Legal issues

Erwin, whose office is in charge of distributing permits for "external speakers," says that even though a speaker's message may not be welcomed by students, the speaker still has a legal right to be here.
"The university's policy, as well as the Regents' policy, provides for the opportunity for external speakers to come on campus and to speak publicly without necessarily being invited," Erwin said. "It's part of being a public institution."
According to the External Speaker's Policy, in Article 28 of the Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities, in order for external speakers to be allowed on campus, they need to fill out an Information Data Card, at which time they will be informed of where they will be allowed to speak on campus. No speakers are allowed to use voice amplification equipment, such as a megaphone or microphone, and cannot give an address that would pose a danger to PSU's regular operations. Such addresses include inciting the violent overthrow of the government, willful destruction of property, disruption of classes or physical harm or invasion of rights to officials, faculty or students.
Erwin says that the code is primarily in place to give the administration some control over speakers who come to campus.
"Within that policy, it really allows us to control time, place and manner," Erwin said. "That means a person like that would have to be registered and have to follow our guidelines in terms of where they can be and during what times and what duration, and then for us to be able to plan for any logistical concerns. In his case, we were obviously concerned about the nature of the message and the orderliness of the crowd, so the university police was present for that."
During the course of Bourgault's preaching, a group of students set up a petition at one of the available tables in the Oval to have the preacher removed from campus. The petition had around 70 signatures by the time Bourgault was escorted from campus.
"We're just going to get as many signatures as we can and then we're going to give them straight to the dean," Joshua Durham, sophomore in mechanical engineering and one of the students who organized the petition, said. "We're petitioning pretty much against his methodology of coming to preach here. We're not petitioning against the fact that he's coming here preaching the gospel, but the fact that he's picking out certain students and calling them 'homos' and 'sodomites,' stuff like that. We don't believe that should be welcome on our campus."
Despite their efforts, Erwin said that such a petition wouldn't override the university policy concerning external speakers.
"Again, as a public institution," Erwin said, "there are going to be certain opportunities for individuals to appear that people may greatly disagree with ... and I suppose we had that kind of thing going on in even more organized events that you might find that kind of significant disagreement."

Questions and concerns

In addition to the negative reactions of many students, other students had questions and concerns raised by the preacher's appearance.
Maria Ferreira, international student from Paraguay, says that she had a hard time understanding the students' reaction.
"These people yelling, but they won't change his mind. And he won't change theirs," Ferreira said. "In Paraguay, it would be different. People would walk by and laugh. But maybe that is because we are more homogenous with our religion - most people are Roman Catholic, so there would be less discussion about this. People wouldn't bother. But here, they are being disrespectful, they are mocking him, getting so mad."
Marianne Evans-Lombe, lecturer in social sciences, took her Introduction to Women's Studies class out to the Oval after the class voted unanimously to do so.
"They felt that it was important that their presence was there as strong women on campus, and they also wanted the opportunity to refute things or to stand up for other women when he said things, but they couldn't get a response from him," Evans-Lombe said. "The few who did speak up, he just ignored them entirely."
The class was primarily interested in engaging Bourgault in a discussion because of the many sexist comments they had heard him make.
"A lot of them were appalled because they had actually witnessed him pointing fingers at women and called them whores, saying they should not be allowed to be in college, that they should be at home cooking and cleaning," Evans-Lombe said. "It was an affront to their basic sensibilities. This class is about them as human beings not being judged based on their gender, and he was all about making decisions for them based on his perception of their gender."
Evans-Lombe also says that the disappointing part of the experience was Bourgault's manner.
"My class felt thwarted," she said. "They would've actually liked to have engaged in a dialogue with him. They would've liked to actually discuss those issues with him, and he would not even acknowledge their presence or their questions, so they felt entirely thwarted. But they were prepared to debate with him back and forth entirely. But that wasn't his presentation style, and not what he was interested in."
Some students, however, thought that the preacher had some interesting effects on the students watching.
"I'm impressed by his ability to get students to interact with him," Eddie Penner, senior in biology, said. "He does a 'good' job of calling people out directly, and anytime you do that people are going to respond."
Penner says that he thought the implications of the interactions were tied to bigger issues than just a yelling match about religion, though.
"It's interesting because I think this is causing a lot of people to think about free speech," Penner said. "It gets people asking questions."

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