Submission: Free speech taken too far?

If you have walked past Bruin Plaza any time within the last month and a half, you’ve seen the Yelling Guy. He’s the guy that stands there in front of the stage, nervously shuffling back and forth and just plain yelling. And I know I cannot be the only one who’s tired of it and wants to see him removed from the campus.

My main problem with Yelling Guy is not that he has been there tirelessly, day after day, for more than a month (though that has been getting quite irksome over the last couple weeks) ““ but more importantly, that when you listen to his yelling, you can’t actually tell what he’s yelling about.

The intermittent-burst style of his yelling, peppered with words like “lies,” “consumerism,” “Nazis” and “destruction of the world,” really doesn’t seem to have any point. I don’t know if he’s yelling at me, yelling for me or just plain yelling, and that’s why the Yelling Guy bugs me so much.

At least when it’s a religious zealot yelling or a Proposition 8 opponent yelling or other demonstrators yelling, you can tell what their purpose is, and you know they picked that very specific day to stand out in the sun and yell for their cause. But this is not the case with Yelling Guy. I have grown weary of having to listen to his yelling every day.

Of course, it is a fine line that people who share my view must walk. There are definitely First Amendment rights that even Yelling Guy is entitled to.

We cannot just request his removal on the grounds that he is making tons of people uncomfortable and irritated, because that would be spun into the school trampling on his First Amendment rights. At the same time, I can’t just dismiss him as a crazy hobo and ask that he be removed on those grounds, because that would be callous of me, and I’d be vilified for not seeing Yelling Guy’s humanity.

What is there left to do? Are we all supposed to just suck it up and bear it because he’s entitled to express himself? If it is just a cathartic exercise on his part to release his feelings about the depressing state of the world, are we supposed to willingly act as his psychiatrist’s couch without batting an eyelash? When do his First Amendment rights infringe on our rights to the pursuit of happiness in the form of not having to listen to yelling while we’re on our way to class?

These questions could be debated for hours without an answer, and I doubt anyone will ever come up with a politically correct reason to get rid of Yelling Guy, or others like him. However, I believe that a month should be more than enough time for a demonstrator to express their First Amendment rights, and I think that the administration should do something ““ anything ““ to either limit the days he is allowed to yell or remove him from campus altogether.

This is a time of year when many prospective students visit the campus; I would hate for the one reason a future Nobel Laureate decides not to attend UCLA to be the crazy Yelling Guy they saw when they visited. Something needs to be done; I leave it in the administration’s hands to figure out what.

Hanlon is a fourth-year Japanese student.

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