When word spread that Bay Buchanan was coming to Vanderbilt, people freaked out. Vanderbilt students usually don’t get too riled up about much. It’s usually that same group of people that goes to Vanderbilt Student Government meetings and has a different profile picture up each week supporting some new cause. The activists who held a protest for Buchanan’s speech had a pretty good turnout but unfortunately, their efforts did not do much to enhance their purpose. In fact, they did more to help the other side.
Buchanan, notorious for her hard-line views on illegal immigration, was invited here by Youth for a Western Civilization. This new student organization brags two members and maybe a few more on a good day. Their views are extreme, and if they had a louder following, it would probably be appropriate to panic. According to posters all over campus, 3 percent of Vanderbilt men are OK with rape, so I don’t think two guys with extreme anti-multiculturalist views warrant as much attention as they got. All the protesters did was give their group legitimacy. The picketing, the letters and the publicity have given YWC an identity, and that is all that they wanted.
As for the speech, there was really nothing to worry about there. For someone as renowned as Buchanan, filling up a small lecture room in Garland is not much of a feat. The first three rows were filled with a bunch of guys looking their frattiest, and the rest of the room consisted of people either writing about the event or protesting it. Buchanan’s voice did not call out to many sympathetic listeners.
For the people who actually listened to the entire speech, the experience was not all that bad. Walking past the protesters in front of the building made it seem like Satan himself had come to address the crowd, but most of her talk was pretty tame. She vocalized views about our country’s faulty immigration policies that many Americans would agree with.
Every once in a while, though, Buchanan had some wild things to say. She mentioned focusing on diversity would bring this nation to its end, and America does not place enough importance upon complete assimilation of different cultures. As extreme as this sounds, some of the protesters’ questions and comments actually made Buchanan look pretty reasonable. One of the protestors came forward claiming Buchanan had “blood on her hands” for spreading her message. He also asked her what she would do if she lived in a third world country (Mexico?) with her starving children and it bordered one of the wealthiest nations in the world. She handled this and other ridiculous questions well, mentioning that this is Mexico’s problem and the U.S. can’t help every suffering person on the planet. We can’t save everyone.
Despite their efforts, Vanderbilt’s small group of activists accomplished giving legitimacy to an extreme right-wing group, gave more publicity to an event than it deserved, and they made Buchanan, one of the most controversial figures in the nation, seem like a woman with very reasonable views and opinions. This was an epic fail for the “leftist lunacy” the YWC is trying to fight, but no worries, I am sure Berkley’s first dissenters had their bumps, too.
—Frannie Boyle is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Science.  She can be reached at mary.f.boyle@vanderbilt.edu.
