 Today I sat down with the Kull Republicans and Kull Democrats to speak about whether they thought free speech was threatened on UC Berkeley's campus. We spoke about the Milo protests, what constitutes this free speech, and whether or not protests were good for free speech. I'm Emanuel Ishaa and this is CULTIV NEWS. After I asked my first question, which was if either side felt like free speech was threatened on UC Berkeley's campus, there was a discrepancy about the definition of free speech. I think that infringement on free speech is what government comes in and tells people they can't say something. It does not have to be a government body, necessarily that threatens one's free speech. It's just anyone. Everyone has the constitutional right to speak freely. Was Milo safe to bring to campus? Democrats didn't think so. First I think it was just incredibly dangerous to bring him to campus. I think that what he says is not political, it's hateful. However, Republicans felt like he would have brought a different perspective to Berkeley. Because BCR has not been able to have a high profile just due to the fact that this is such a liberal campus and it's just very hard to gain traction. But also BCR was just very interested in having Milo come because that's a whole different perspective that's not often shown on liberal campuses, especially Berkeley's. But was it Milo's message that caused controversy? We need to kind of establish like this sort of what is and isn't going to actively be hurting people. Speech is so much more than just sound waves coming out of our mouths. Speech inspires people to do things. Hateful speech and offensive speech and controversial speech is a very subjective issue. Something that you might find offensive, I might not find offensive. So it becomes a very slippery slope where if we ban a certain form of offensive speech, we could be banning all sorts of speech because we don't know how to define exactly offensive or hateful speech. The best way to dispel of bad or controversial or offensive ideas is to have them openly debated and discussed. The debate took a different direction after the question of whether or not protests stunt free speech. I think Berkeley has a really rich history of assembly and protest and it's not shutting down anybody's free speech. It's just a really almost what comes to mind when you think of free speech is this freedom to assemble and protest. At this time, the Democrats and Republicans agreed. I would firmly defend the right to protest and freely assemble. It's enshrined within the First Amendment of the Constitution. I would disagree that protests don't necessarily involve violence. There are violent protests and historically there have been violent protests. But feasts will protest whether that's the free speech movement of the 60s or the Montgomery-Bosboy Cots of the 1950s. I would firmly defend and I think that is one of the best ways for a group of people within the citizenry to exercise their First Amendment rights. Despite the fact that neither party supported the violent agitators, Republicans felt that the protests were counterproductive by further spreading Milo's message. So of course I wouldn't defend the anarchist group's actions. In fact I would be very strongly against them because not only did they incite violence but they barred Milo from actually speaking and getting his message out, which ironically enough allowed him to further disseminate his message and his point because he got a lot of media attention for it. So I would fundamentally defend the right to protest and the right to assemble. The divide on campus between liberals and conservatives were evident throughout the debate. As a conservative, I often find it difficult to speak my full beliefs because of certain biases that pervade this campus. I have conservative colleagues who have been sucker punched, pepper sprayed, threatened, assaulted. But all in all, the debate ended on a positive note with both parties working towards a bipartisan resolution. There are things that we can just come together and find some kind of common ground on. So there is this polarization split between voters. I think that discussion and deliberation between both sides is fundamentally what we should be focusing on, especially in the wake of such a polarizing and divisive election. This is Emanuel Alashar reporting for CalTV News.