Pence Speaks on UVA Campus Despite Opposition from Student Newspaper

By WMAL.com

Former Vice President Mike Pence was in Charlottesville on Tuesday speaking on the campus of University of Virginia at an event hosted by the Young America’s Foundation. Leading up to the speech, Pence’s visitation to the campus became the topic of a heated debate, as the student paper and faculty spared over the role of free speech on campus.

The Cavalier Daily, the student paper at UVA, penned a piece calling for the school to bar Pence from campus on the grounds that he did not deserve the platform for his use of what they referred to as “violent rhetoric”. Faculty members were quick to critize the piece penning an OpEd of their own. “What saddens us about the mindset of The Cavalier Daily editorial is its assumption that the editors should enjoy the freedom to say what they want but others with whom they disagree should not,” said the faculty in the joint OpEd.

Pence appeared to make mention of controversy during his speech on Tuesday saying, “The antidote to ‘cancel culture’ is freedom. The antidote to ‘woke America’ is freedom.” He continued by saying that “woke-ism” is a disturbing, yet growing, trend on college campuses around the country.