Conservative NC State student says he was assaulted with spray paint in campus tunnel
An N.C. State University student says he was assaulted with spray paint Monday night in a politically charged encounter with other students that he called “thugs” in the free expression tunnel on the Raleigh campus.
Jack Bishop, a 19-year-old freshman and the son of recently elected Republican Congressman Dan Bishop, said he was painting an advertisement for a Wednesday night campus event called “Culture War” when other students interrupted his efforts. The event is hosted by N.C. State’s chapter of Turning Point USA, a conservative student movement, and is billed as an opportunity to hear guest speaker Charlie Kirk and Lara Trump, President Trump’s daughter-in-law, “take on big government, culture and the left.”
“The worst thing that happened was the fact that we had a bunch of people coming up to intimidate conservative students and try to censor conservative speech on campus,” Bishop told The News & Observer.
“It seems like it’s increasingly more acceptable to censor political speech that you don’t like, and with violent means if necessary,” he said.
Bishop said he and fellow students were painting details of the event, conservative slogans and an American flag when a group of other students arrived with more cans of spray paint. The other students, he said, were members of the Young Democratic Socialists of America at N.C State and other student activists with the No Hate at NC State Coalition.
Those students have organized a protest of the event, saying the speakers “promote hate speech against various minority and marginalized groups.” They started a petition asking the university to shut down the event that has more than 1,000 signatures.
Bishop tweeted that “socialists rolled up on us with spray paint and proceeded to spray my eyes, neck, head and torso” and that his injuries “required the aid of an EMS.”
Video footage from the incident shared on social media shows about 30 seconds of an altercation between Bishop and another individual. The video, posted by local “conservative watchdog” Luke Stancil, shows a few individuals spray painting over the advertisement to cover it up.
Bishop walks over to one of those people and stands between them and the wall as they are spraying paint. He said he stood up against the wall to protect the work.
‘Spray painting me in the face’
At one point in the video, Bishop says of the paint, “it smells great,” then leans toward the canister that’s being sprayed around him. Bishop continues to stand talking to the other student, saying “that’s about right ... spray painting me in the face” before the video cuts off.
Bishop said he didn’t immediately react to being sprayed because it took a few minutes for his eye to start hurting. He said his group called campus police and that officers arrived with EMS within 5 to 10 minutes. The officers dispersed the crowd, he said.
On Twitter, Bishop thanked campus police officers and asked that they “please find these thugs and bring them to justice.”
Bishop said he filed charges for assault and property damage against two students who sprayed him with paint.
N.C. State police could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening.
‘He intentionally tried to get sprayed’
A member of the No Hate at NC State Coalition sent a statement saying they were posting fliers about their protest around campus, including at the free expression tunnel, when they saw the painted advertisement of the conservative students.
“We decided to go and cover it with our own message,” says the statement written by student activists who were involved in the incident. The statement says Bishop “attempted to prevent students from exercising their First Amendment Rights by jumping in front of several of us while we were spraypainting. He intentionally tried to get sprayed to frame it as an assault.
“All of us who were painting intentionally avoided spraying anyone, moved away from them several times and advised them to move away from the wall,” the statement says.
They said the campus police briefly detained two people in their group and issued campus conduct citations to members of both groups, but no arrests were made.
Stancil, the N.C. State student who posted the video on Twitter, said he has no problem with students painting over messages at the tunnel. But he said the activists shouldn’t have escalated the situation while the conservative students were still there.
He said there has been plenty of sniping back and forth on social media between liberal and conservative classmates during his time on campus, but this is the first physical confrontation he’s aware of. He’s a senior.
Support from the congressman
U.S. Rep Bishop, who won a special September election over Democrat Dan McCreedy, supported his son in an emailed statement.
“Our universities are beacons for free speech and intellectual freedom — unless a student has the gall to voice support for President Trump or conservative ideas,” Bishop’s email said. “I commend Jack Bishop and other young conservatives for speaking up, refusing to be intimidated, and taking in stride the hallmark assaults of the ‘tolerant’ left. I am confident that UNC System President Bill Roper and NCSU Chancellor Randy Woodson will appropriately protect these students’ free expression rights, as the Campus Free Speech Act requires.”
Young Democratic Socialists of America at N.C. State could not be reached Tuesday, but the group tweeted that Turning Point USA “says they support free speech but then calls the cops on students who are just freely expressing themselves in the FREE EXPRESSION tunnel. No Hate at NC State!”
The group said it will protest Wednesday night’s event, which they say is a platform to preach “dangerous, pro-Trump, white-supremacist, anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric on NC State’s campus.”
The Culture Wars event is at 7 p.m. at the Talley Student Union with Lara Trump, an N.C. State graduate and Wilmington native. The protest is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. in Wolf Plaza near the free expression tunnel.
Staff writers Brian Murphy and Will Doran contributed to this story.
This story was originally published November 12, 2019 at 8:27 PM.
