Students arrested for opinions

Eleven people were arrested Monday night after a protest arouse during a lecture at UC Irvine by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren on U.S. and Israel relations.

While trying to give his speech Oren was interrupted 10 times by members of the 500 capacity audience.

After the fourth interruption Oren took a 20-minute break, when he resumed so did the interruptions. Why he thought taking a break would magically quiet the audience, who knows.

After the tenth interruption, several students grew tired of the unnoticed insults and decided to walk out and stage a protest.

Oren decided to not be denied his right to speak, and preached on to the remaining guests. Originally he had planned to take on questions at the end, but after the delays and his newly hurt feelings that was cancelled.

UCI Police Chief Paul Henisey said it is not clear whether any of the protesters are UCI students.

According to the Orange County Register Mark Petracca, a UCI political science professor,  lost his temper and yelled, "This is embarrassing  … Shame on all of you."

Shame on them?

Why should someone feel ashamed for standing up for what they believe in? If that is the case then shame on Oren for giving a lecture on what he believes, and shame on Mark Petracca for feeling that they were being embarrassing.

Freedom of speech goes both ways, even though it doesn't seem like it does much anymore. Our society has created this new "norm" for who gets to pull the freedom of speech card.

These protestors had just has much freedom of speech as Oren did.

If the UCI administrators didn't want to have outbursts, and demonstrations of disagreement towards the speaker they should have had these as more of a open debate then a lecture.

By having Oren come and lecture these people on relations, they gave out the message of being preached to and that if someone disagreed with him they were wrong.

This event was set to fail before it began, if UCI would have announced their want to have Oren as a speaker they should have taken suggestions on how the campus body would like to view it.

If they would have done that, then these so-called protestors wouldn't be protestors they would have been participants.

Instead of ending in controversy and misunderstandings, UCI could have taken a large step in getting the two sides of this hot topic talking to each other and learning from one another.