Capacity crowd for Ben Shapiro

By Kevin Gerych
Staff Writer

Aside from a line that wrapped around the block, it was mostly quiet and peaceful when Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire editor-in-chief known for his politcally conservative commentary, spoke at University of Michigan’s Rackham Auditorium on March 12.

Shapiro talked on the topic of governmental overreach and engaged in a half-hour long question and answer session with the audience.

Despite rumors and rumblings of possible issues concerning the scalping of free tickets, Rackham auditorium was completely full at its capacity of 1060.

“It was maximum capacity, completely sold out in under two minutes for the first round of tickets and under one minute for the second round of tickets,” said Kate Westa, the vice chair of the U-M chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom.

Behind the scenes work by Westa and her fellow Young Americans for Freedom colleagues was done to make the event happen.

“Through the Young Americans Foundation, Ben does a semester tour, where he picks six campuses,” said Westa. “So we went through the application on the foundation’s website to do that and thankfully, we were selected”

Being selected as a stop on Shapiro’s lecture tour was only the first of a series of hurdles to cross for the organizers.

“From there, we hit the ground running. We met with the campus coordinators. We looked into places to host the event,” said Westa. “Sometimes we ran into things where the school comes up with policies that we’ve never heard of before and try to throw a wrench into the works and make us jump through hoops that I don’t really think they would make a lot of the leftist clubs jump through, but it was to be expected.”

Despite tickets for this particular event being such a hot commodity, the initial choice of venue was nearly half the size of Rackham.

“We ended up getting Rackham Auditorium last second,” said Westa. “We almost ended up in Mendelssohn Theater, which only holds 600.”

Not everybody was happy with Shapiro coming to campus. A group called “Shut Down Ben Shapiro” was organized with the intent of stopping the event.

“Ben Shapiro is alt-right lite,” said Jessica Prozinski, an activist who helped to organize a protest against the event. “He walks the line between saying things that are socially acceptable and signaling what his real opinions are.”

Promises of a protest extravaganza went unfulfilled. Only a small handful of protesters showed, waving signs and shouting chants as the crowd slowly filed into the auditorium.

“I’m honestly surprised anyone showed up,” said Westa. “Most times Antifa threatens and nobody comes.”

“Kudos to them for creativity,” said Westa. “I think they might have benefited from actually coming into the event and engaging in robust debates instead of shouting people down. In the end, they have the freedom to do what they want to do and we do, too.”

Ann Arbor police and U-M public safety officers were present at the event, ensuring that the protesters and eventgoers were allowed to participate in their respective activities.

“There were about a handful protesters, nothing too out of control,” said Ann Arbor Police Sergeant Bill Clock. “The protesters had pretty much dispersed about 20 minutes into the lecture, apparently they had become hungry and regrouped at Buffalo Wild Wings.”

“I don’t know of anyone who was opposed to Ben Shapiro who actually got in and frankly, that made the talk boring when I watched it later,” said Prozinski. “He thrives off of the back and forth with people who don’t agree with him.”

Prozinski said that the protesters didn’t let their relatively small numbers keep them from making their message clear.

“We may have only had about a dozen protesters,” said Prozinski. “But I feel good about how our protest went, we did everything we could with the resources we had.”

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