Tears shed at Rick Santorum’s Cornell speech

On November 30, Rick Santorum, former Republican nominee hopeful, spoke at Statler Auditorium. The former Senator came to talk about the election and several Cornell students met him with protests. Throughout the evening, there were several acts against the speaker, the first one being a gathering of students and local members of the community outside of Statler expressing their dissatisfaction with Santorum’s speaking at Cornell.

With chants such as “Fuck Rick Santorum!” and “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Rick Santorum go away,” the protesters made themselves known to the crowd of people waiting to enter the event what some Cornell students thought of the event. What seemed to be a strong protest as it was, this was only the beginning.

Inside the auditorium, a good number of students had formed “Solidarity Against Santorum”, where they wore rainbow bandanas to signify their support of the LGBTQI+ community as a reaction to what they saw as Santorum’s homophobic views. Throughout the event, several members of the audience were disruptive to when both Olivia Corn ’19, the President of the Cornell Republicans, and Rick Santorum spoke. The organizers had to remind the audience several times of the ramifications of disrupting the event. There was no change.

After the event, Elise Czuchna ’18 said:

“We disagree significantly with the things [Santorum] says and the claims he makes. I mean, throughout the presentation, I cried. He basically invalidated the entire LGBTQI+ community and quite literally said if he had a gay grandchild, he would essentially put them through conversion therapy to put them back on God’s tracks. So, he says some incredibly outrageous things that attacks the identity of many, many people, many whom are present in the audience today.”

With regards to organizing the Solidarity Against Santorum, Elise added:

“Really what we sought to do was to literally just in numbers. I didn’t speak really, I didn’t have a question for him, I didn’t interrupt his conversation because I understood needing to respect him and the things he said. He was an invited speaker and should have been shown some respect, but at the same time I do not agree with the things he has said.”