A Minnesota College Republicans chapter recently caught several vandals in the act after installing a hidden security camera near their club advertisements.
Tayler Lehmann, president of the University of Minnesota, Morris College Republicans, told The College Fix that he’s complained to the university about his club’s ads disappearing in the past, but the university has done nothing.
In fact, a university security camera that was supposed to be monitoring the area where the club’s fliers were hanging was conveniently broken at one point.
“It’s been always happening, ever since I have been a freshman,” Lehmann told The Fix. “It’s been happening since I stepped foot on campus as a freshman and nothing got done. Part of the time the cameras didn’t work and people just kept taking down our posters. I guess we got fed up with it and we thought of a way to handle it ourselves.”
Lehmann and his peers purchased a $30 camera online and installed it in a campus locker directly across from where the fliers were hanging. It didn’t take long for them to catch some action. In a video provided to The Fix, the security camera captured more than 10 separate instances of vandalism, which were reported to campus security.
The advertisements themselves promoted the club’s meeting times and often had a funny picture or quote. One of the fliers had a picture of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his quote of: “We drank beer. I liked beer, I still like beer.” Another stated that there are only two genders, while a third had a picture of President Donald Trump.
“They are definitely acceptable compared to other posters all around them,” Lehmann said. “Some of them were about making fun of the wall, and there is a club on campus called Queer Devil Worshipers for a Better Future, and they post random posters.”
John Hinderaker, president of Minnesota’s Center of the American Experiment, said he doubts university administrators will do anything about it since “the likelihood of their being in favor of free speech is slim.”
He went on to compare the student vandals with Nick Sandmann, the “16-year-old boy who was smeared by CNN, The Washington Post, and many other news outlets.”
“These are college students, older and presumably more responsible than Sandmann. Moreover, Sandmann did nothing wrong—his alleged crime was standing while a jerk pounded a drum in his face,” Hinderaker wrote at Powerline. “So CNN, The Washington Post, and all the other news outlets who attacked Sandmann should really go crazy on these college students. Right? Because their actions are obviously much worse than his, and they are older and more mature. Right?”
“Do you think any of that is going to happen? I don’t either,” he concluded. “Because our press is utterly corrupt.”
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of Battleground State News, The Ohio Star, and The Minnesota Sun. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
