As you emerge from a lecture in Turlington Hall, you are met by a religious fanatic spewing hate — a spectacle that is fundamentally opposite to the intellectualism and philosophy of academia. The crowd is budding and you're left with two options: stop and gawk at a miserable person attempting to spread ignorance and intolerance, or continue walking. The former option is tempting in the same way visiting a circus might be; satisfying a primal interest to view a spectacle. But every second you spend watching the pontificator is just another second encouraging his or her behavior.
The past couple years have brought many breeds of religious fanatics to Gainesville, some flaunting "Islam is of the devil" shirts and others shrieking that you, a college student trying to maneuver through crowds to your next class, will spend eternity in hell unless you accept the beliefs they were most likely born into. These people, collectively referred to as the "Turlington preachers," are not a phenomenon exclusive to UF. Campus preachers are found ubiquitously at American universities. They survive on one thing: attention.
If you give campus preachers your attention, you acknowledge that they use an effective means of communication. If you stop to listen, you acknowledge that it is worthwhile for them to bring misinformation and intolerance to our campus. In essence, listening to campus preachers encourages them to continue with their absurd behavior. But we do not want to encourage that absurd behavior in our society, much less in an educational institution.
For the benefit of yourself and our university, you should not engage in a one-liner, public debate with campus preachers. You can't win.
They win the moment you stop, long before you open your mouth. You also certainly should not say a mean-spirited comment in passing. Why add more hate to their lives? The only reasonable course of action is to ignore them entirely. Ignoring campus preachers sends a message that prideful ignorance is not tolerated in an intellectual institution, and if they are perpetually ignored, they will eventually stop fear- and hate-mongering.
But the act of ignoring must be unremitting and almost forced. It is easy to stop and gawk at yelling ignoramuses, but the moment you stop and gawk, they have already achieved their goal. If the collective Student Body utterly ignores them, campus preachers will learn that hateful, over-the-top conduct is not an effective way to communicate, and they will be left with two options: change their behavior or fade into oblivion.
Being keen, educated Gainesville residents, we know the most important step toward wisdom is the perpetual consideration of ideas in conflict with your own. Clearly, I don't advocate shunning a belief simply because it is extreme. We all have ideas that someone somewhere would consider extreme. Private discussion with campus preachers is fine, but the anti-intellectual disputes that occur on campus are not. Attempting to have an open-minded discussion in private with campus preachers will probably be futile, but you might just learn something like what type of life can lead someone to such hatefulness or how you should not raise your kids.
But when they are on campus misinterpreting scientific theories or pontificating about ideas founded on ignorance and hate, you should not acknowledge campus preachers. If the Student Body can do this, we can take a little bit of hate out of our campus. So for the benefit of yourself and our university, the next time you see a campus preacher, just keep walking.
Abdul Zalikha is a biology and English junior at UF. His column appears on Wednesdays.
