Conservative speaker arrested at UConn

Last Tuesday,  conservative speaker Lucian Wintrich, sponsored by UConn’s Republican student group,  and a White House correspondent for the right-wing blog, Gateway Pundit,  was arrested after speaking on the controversial topic, “It’s Okay to be White” at The Uconn campus.

Videos show Wintrich grab a young woman after she took papers off the podium from which he was speaking.

The woman, a student at the UConn campus, grabbed the papers and attempted to walk off into the crowd of people gathered. That is when an altercation occurred between Wintrich and the woman.

Wintrich grabbed the woman in an attempt to retrieve his papers from her. Police quickly separated the two and led Wintrich out of Andre Schenker Lecture Hall.

He was arrested and subsequently charged with breach of peace, a misdemeanor.

The university has made a statement about the incident, saying, “UConn does not bar speakers on the basis of content. Free speech, like academic freedom, is one of the university’s bedrock principles.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, windows were broken during the commotion and a smoke bomb was let off. Police were also investigating this incident.

Stephanie Reitz, a Uconn spokeswoman confirmed that Wintrich was held by campus police and charged.

“It’s really unfortunate that some of the kids at @UConn felt the need to be violent and disruptive during a speech that focused on how the leftist media is turning Americans against each other,” Wintrich wrote on Twitter early Wednesday after he was released from police custody. “Tonight proved my point.”

UConn President Susan Herbst called it “a very disappointing evening.”

This issue correlates with many other issues that have happened recently in the U.S.

One example concerns when Milo Yiannopoulos, along with several other conservative speakers, spoke at Berkeley for Free Speech Week.

Upon getting news that Yiannopoulos was speaking at Berkley, 100 or so Antifa members marched into the fray, broke windows, lit fires, and vandalized nearby city streets. The university ordered a campus-wide “Shelter in Place” order.

The protest cost almost $100,000 worth of damage.

Although Wintrich’s speaking event did not erupt so violently, it still highlighted the controversy in politics today.