Updated at 8:05 p.m. on Friday, March 28, 2025.
Colorado Mesa University students protested Thursday afternoon against a white supremacist speaker on campus. Except the students say this protest was different than the usual demonstration. They used a variety of tactics, including a sit-in, a demonstration at a busy intersection — and a mechanical bull.
"So many people are here getting free food to just playing games, pickleball, throwing the football around and just having a fun time because spread love, not hate," student Vicente Valadez said.
The bull was one of many activities in what was a huge party in the middle of campus at the same time a white supremacist addressed a small crowd in the student union. Organizers called it the Unity Festival, and they said it was meant to be a burst of joy in the face of hate. In addition to the bull, it featured food trucks, games and free music spread across the school’s pavilion and rugby field. The people who attended the talk had to walk past it.
Crowds waited in line for boba and churros while others danced or perused booths set up by 20 other campus clubs.
“What we can do to bring people together in an uplifting and positive way in the face of so much divisiveness?” Alex Austin, one of the student organizers, said.
There was a much bigger turnout than we had planned for," Jay Stewart, with the Black Student Alliance, another organizer, said. "We've been talking about it for the last few weeks."
Stewart says the message of the party was "You guys deserve to be on this campus as much as anybody else, even though this is a white community."
For weeks, the biggest controversy at the small university on the edge of the western Colorado desert has been a planned visit by the former publisher of a magazine that the Southern Poverty Law Center says “regularly published proponents of eugenics and blatant anti-Black and anti-Latino racists.” The speaker has linked race to intelligence and has said Black people could destroy civilization. He has spoken at colleges before and was invited to speak at Colorado Mesa by a new school club, which theoretically celebrates classical Western culture.
Colorado Public Radio has chosen not to name the speaker.
The welcoming vibe relieved Gigi Higginbotham who worried the racist speaker would inspire violence.
"I was having panic attacks before this," Higginbotham, who is part of the Gender and Sexualities Alliance, which brought dogs for students to pet during the festival, said. "But seeing everyone out here, being so kind and so unified against hate is incredible. And as a queer, disabled person, it makes me feel really encouraged."
Colorado Mesa President John Marshall has described the speaker controversy as an issue of freedom of speech. While he openly rejects the hateful philosophy that will be espoused, he feels it was his duty to allow the talk. He likened this controversy to pro-Palestinian protests that took place on campus last year. He said some students felt threatened and asked him why he allowed the demonstrations.
“And the answer is because that's what's required on a university campus, is to allow all ideas, regardless how objectionable we find them,” Marshall said. “Everybody's got to have an opportunity.”
When the news broke of the speaker’s impending visit, students immediately banded together to resist him and his message. Austin and three friends sat down at a table in the student union and, after several hours, had drafted a plan for the Unity Party. Within days, they had the support of 20 school clubs and the school itself. As much as they didn’t want the racist speaker on campus, he knew he couldn’t stop him.
When people look back on today, he said he wants them to see “we’re the school who threw the massive party that was positive in response.”
At the same time, hundreds of more students held a more traditional protest nearby, some with signs decrying the speaker. Others blamed Marshall for supporting free speech in a way they felt made the campus unsafe. Marshall spent hours at Unity Festival talking with students about their concerns.
The white supremacist’s address only drew a small audience, with many students getting free tickets just so they could leave seats empty. Samuel Seitz said he attended in order to confront the speaker with questions. Seitz said it’s troubling that the speaker thought his hateful message would resonate at Colorado Mesa.
“I think he’s going to show up today, and he’s going to see that he was damn wrong about how in support CMU is of his viewpoints,” Seitz told CPR News before the event, noting it feels “dang good” to see so many students work together in protest.
"He admitted he had never seen a campus this united against him," Seitz told CPR News Thursday evening.
Seitz is part of a group who actually joined the club who invited the speaker in the hopes that they could vote out its founder and disinvite the speaker. That attempt failed, however, after the university said their election was invalid after they missed a required step.
Many students had expressed fears that violence could accompany Thursday's talk and have criticized Marshall for not doing more. According to the Daily Sentinel, a lawyer who has represented white extremists has given $1,000 to the club who invited the speaker to help put on the event. Marshall said there was a security plan in place.
Marshall saw the moment as a time to push back on division with unity. While he wouldn't keep the speaker from saying his mind, Marshall believed students would let him know he’s not welcome.
“I think in love and in peace and in joy, I think our students are going to draw a line in the sand and say, okay, pal, you've got your hour. We choose a different path,” Marshal said.
