I'm The Alabama Student Who Tweeted The SGA Email — And I Still Have Questions About 'Disruptive Behavior'

By Carter-William Palek


Football is a significant piece of life for most students at the University of Alabama, and there’s not much that will ever change that. Nevertheless off-the-field drama is speedily threatening to overshadow this weekend’s football game: On Tuesday (November 5), I acquired an email from the school’s Student Government Association (SGA) reminding students to be on their best behavior throughout this week’s football game against Louisiana State University. The note came from student Jason Rothfarb, the vice president of student affairs for SGA, and specifically stated, in bold and underlined text:


“Any agencies that engage in disruptive ​behavior while in the game will be removed from block seating instantly for the last of the season.”


Without context, the message seems innocent enough, yet several Alabama students believe this was a try to silence their free expression, given the news: Earlier this week, it was reported that President Donald Trump would visit this Saturday's college football matchup between LSU and Alabama at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa.


Immediately, people on social media started speculating that the reason in back of Trump’s visit was far less about taking in a football game — given his track record with the sport and its players is historically terrible — and more about a possibility for a much-needed PR boost. The President was recently booed at two major sporting events — first at A global Series game in Washington, DC, where an audience threw his infamous “Lock her up!” Chant back in his face; then later at a UFC fight, where he was met with signs that read “Impeach Trump.” By contrast, Alabama is deep in the heart of “Trump Country,” so logic could propose that a U of A game should be a friendly crowd.


Yet perhaps some people feared it would not be. While the SGA’s email never mentions Trump by name, several students made the logical conclusion that the only reason we were given this warning was to prevent a repeat of the previous sporting events. Given the fact that groups around campus immediately started planning ways to protest the President’s visit soon following the trip was reported — groups whose members were largely female and students of color — it’s hard not to be able to see the intentionally vague message as a try to prevent the President of the United States being booed.


The Alabama student section can be a notoriously rowdy place. Cherished gameday traditions include an expletive-laden rendition of “Dixieland Delight,” cheerily taunting teams “We Just Beat The Hell Out of You” immediately after victories, and typically being as loud as possible. If that’s never been believed “disruptive behavior,” then what was?


That’s exactly why several students, including myself, noticed the email so suspicious. Not even before last year’s rivalry residence game against the perennially hated Auburn Tigers were students reminded to be “well-behaved.” Not since 2015 has Alabama’s SGA sent an email directing student conduct at a football game, any time as soon as they implemented new rules about wristbands for block seating.


because the story gained traction, the discourse morphed into a belief that SGA was trying to silence the students’ First Amendment rights to protest and free speech against the government. Because I had posted the memo on Twitter, that debate was playing out in my own Twitter mentions in real time.


On Wednesday, Rothfarb and the other SGA members who sent the original message sent a follow-up:


“Some have misinterpreted my comment connected with ‘disruptive behavior,’” the statement read. “By disruptive behavior we are asking students to be respectful to all students, and employees and avoid altercations. My email had nothing to do with anyone’s First Amendment rights, and I am sorry for any confusion. Please express yourselves and especially your pride for the Tide!”


The SGA also released an official statement asserting that an Al.Com article was “erroneously assigning a political context” to the e-blast; the statement also reaffirmed the SGA’s “belief in free speech and the rights of all students to express their opinion.”


Predictably, the statement made nothing better and everything worse. The story only gained more traction: the Washington Post, Fox News, NBC Sports, Sports Illustrated, and the Associated Press wrote about the clash. It became a trending topic on Twitter. The President himself retweeted the revised Al.Com article. The ACLU of Alabama put out their opinion on the matter. And the complete time, each person linked back to my tweet.


By noon on Wednesday, much less than a day soon after I posted the screenshot, hundreds of thousands of people had seen my tweet. Many of these added to the thread and voiced their suggestion. So it was somewhat curious to watch, reside in my Twitter mentions, as most of these people seemed to miss the point entirely.


The central theme of the debate became: What was the goal of the original email? Did the SGA officer wish to have a chilling effect on campus free speech? Was the second email really a clarification? Or was it a backpedal on the segment of SGA immediately after they were caught red-handed and embarrassed on social media?


For what it’s worth, no piece of me believes the intention of the initial message was innocent. At worst, it was an intentional act to prevent students from booing the President. At best, it was a reckless directive, totally ignorant how most of them of U of A’s 40,000 students would perceive it. It’s not clear how several members of the SGA vetted the letter before it was delivered, yet the story isn’t what the email meant. It was that it was ever sent at all.


much because the President and long-established media like to paint all of southern America however especially Alabama) in broad red strokes, we know that isn’t true. Tuscaloosa itself lies in one of the most firmly Democratic congressional districts In the United States, represented by Terri Sewell, a Black woman, who ran unopposed in the last two elections and won by a 52-point margin in 2012. The suburb I grew up in, Madison, is residence to NASA headquarters, full of college-educated families, and firmly purple, pragmatic politics. Alabama is one of just eight states with one Republican and one Democrat senator.

The story isn’t what the email meant. It was that it was ever sent at all.

Alabama and LSU fans alike have camped out in my Twitter mentions for days; they were eventually joined by people of all political leanings from all around the nation. Some were predictably rude and harassing, calling me “a mean liberal” who “couldn’t get into a Northern school, and hates the state of Alabama.” (For the record, the University of Alabama School of Law, where I study, is a top 25 law school.) Although the vast majority of people who responded, to my eye, were people just like me:


Southerners, disillusioned by the national politics of both parties, and no fan of the President.


While the national election results may paint a picture of a blood-red Alabama, anyone who has lived here will tell you that’s only a reflection on the effectiveness of voter suppression and racial gerrymandering more than the particular electorate. Case in point, the average Alabama football game is probably a much better cross-section of the state than any voter results. Even a last-minute ticket to the game is more obtainable for most state citizens than the byzantine quagmire of a process that is registering to vote in Alabama, a state that requires pre-registration, permits no same-day voter registration, requires a driver’s license to vote, and which at one point shut down DMV locations in several of the poorest and Blackest counties in the state. (That move was partially reversed soon after an investigation confirmed residents’ belief that such closures impacted Black residents most.)


However Alabama, like so much of the South, is changing. Its rural counties are shrinking. Its cities are exploding, turning younger and more liberal, as flocks of young people flee from the eye-popping rent and endless gridlock of coastal cities. The state's long-established civil rights corporations are energized by new recruits. Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama are prime examples of that change. Nearly 60 percent of the student body is currently originally from somewhere other than Alabama.


Alabama has routinely been a racially and economically diverse place, full of prosperous folk, poor folk, white folks, Black folks, rocket scientists, peanut farmers, and everything in between. Nevertheless right now, in the era of social media, the voices of its marginalized residents that were systematically squashed for so long are being amplified. The voices of Alabamians who have been fighting for civil rights since before that phrase made regional or national headlines can reach a world audience in the blink of an eye.


So any time the President does come on November 9, he plans to undoubtedly drive through campus in a police-escorted motorcade. He'll visualize several of the sights usually connected with the Deep South. He plans to drive through downtown Tuscaloosa, which was burned to ash in the Civil War because the prosperous landowners  defended their mobile participation of slavery. He is going to drive by Foster Auditorium, where Governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door to forcibly block Black students from registering for classes alongside white students. He is going to drive past Morgan Hall, named for a former senator plus a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.


Nevertheless he'll also pass where author Harper Lee and Judge Robert Smith Vance studied law. He’ll head to his box to watch the Crimson Tide, coached by the legendary Nick Saban, who has endorsed Democrats and once let then-President Bill Clinton nap on his couch. And as soon as he is shown on the big screen, he'll be applauded, nevertheless he’ll also be booed. Definitely not by each person. Probably not even by most people. Although he plans to be booed. Because Alabama has never been a place of one singular kind of people.


And to the students that boo him peacefully, as is their First Amendment right, should anyone attempt to remove them? Remember the Alabama state slogan:


“We dare defend our rights.”


As of publish time, neither the University of Alabama nor the Student Government Association had returned MTV News's request for comment.