Mercer ‘reviewing’ incident after student charged with battery at campus speaking event

Mercer University says it is reviewing an incident at a conservative speaking event on campus last week that ended with a student being charged with battery, according to a police report.

The student was arrested by campus police after being accused of making physical contact with Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman who was giving a speech on the Israel-Hamas war, according to Facebook posts from Atlas Society. An incident report provided to The Telegraph by Mercer showed that campus police were dispatched to the Willet Science Center Auditorium for a simple battery investigation.

The Atlas Society is a conservative nonprofit that promotes the philosophy of author and philosopher Ayn Rand, whose works include Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

In a Facebook post the day after the incident, the society posted a video of the confrontation which read “PRO-HAMAS ACTIVISTS ASSAULT SPEAKER AT TURNING POINT USA CAMPUS EVENT.”

In the video, the student is seen walking down the stairs of a university auditorium, confronting Grossman, and then shouting “44,000 Palestinians have been murdered by Israel, 20,000 of them children.”

Later in the video, a Mercer University police officer escorts the student out of the room after they allegedly made physical contact with Grossman.

Jennifer Fairfield, director of media relations for the university, said in a statement the school is reviewing the incident.

“University administrators are reviewing an interaction between an individual student and a guest speaker at a campus lecture Thursday night, and appropriate action will be taken as warranted,” she said. “Disrupting and invading the personal space of a speaker is not acceptable. It is our hope this will ultimately prove to be a positive learning experience for the student.”

The student was booked into the Bibb County jail on Friday and released on $650 bail, according to WSB-TV in Atlanta.

On Sunday, The Atlas Society posted another Facebook video showing a woman speaking about the incident.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was already a divisive topic on college campuses, as in U.S. society at large.

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that, while two-thirds of Americans say the United States should publicly support Israel in the war between Israel and Hamas, there are wide generational and racial differences.