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Last week we learned that Sen. Ben Sasse was resigning in order to take a job as the new president of the University of Florida. Today, Sasse was on campus for a series of meetings with students and staff. But protesters attempted to join the meeting only to find out it had been moved to another room upstairs. That didn’t stop them from shouting and carrying on in response to a livestream shown on screens in the room.

Sasse left the student forum about 15 minutes early, prompting around 300 protestors to enter the room and chant for Sasse to leave the Swamp. Protestors on stage called Sasse homophobic and racist in between yelling from the audience.

“Get the f—k,” a protestor on stage called out.

“Out of our swamp!” The crowd roared in response…

Confusion ensued as an organizer announced the staff forum would be moved to the third floor, but protestors weren’t allowed to enter. Most protestors returned to the second floor ballroom after.

Around 3:50 p.m., a livestream of Ben Sasse and Rahul Patel was played on projectors around the President’s Ballroom in lieu of a third session that was originally scheduled in-person for UF staff.

The protestors crowded the center of the room, with a few student leaders taking the stage where Sasse was sitting just moments earlier.

“If you see Ben Sasse, shout at him,” a protestor said on stage. “Scare the s–t out of him.”

There are photos and videos of most of what happened. It looks like Sasse started answering questions from students a little after 1 pm local time.

Meanwhile, protest got started outside with a professor helping to warm up the crowd. As you can see, this group was not pleased with the suggestion that Sasse might be against “wokeism” on campus.

Students then crowded inside and started chanting.

The chanting interrupted Sasse at one point. He made a joke about them having “good rhythm.”

Protesters’ first attempt to get into the room failed and the door was closed on them.

But eventually they did get inside but only after Sasse had left. They decided to chant even though he wasn’t there to hear it.

They celebrated the minor disruption of the schedule. Shouting Sasse down was clearly the goal.

When another forum was played on projectors inside the room from a remote location, protesters got irritated. They started chanting again even though no one could hear them.

They made a fair amount of noise but in the end I don’t think there were more than 100-125 students involved on a campus which has nearly 35,000 undergraduates. In other words, this is a tiny sliver of the campus and probably not representative of how most students feel.

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