A zealously Christian student who is already notorious on the campus of the University of Arizona for his in-your-face preaching and signage found a way to take his antics to a whole new level this week.
On Tuesday, junior Dean Saxton — widely known as “Brother Dean” — stood in the middle of the sunny campus with a sign blaring, “You deserve rape” in all capital letters. For variety, the classics and religious studies major held two other signs as well, proclaiming, “Frat boyz are the rapists” and “Sorority girls are whores.”
The other side of the “You deserve rape” sign reportedly opined that “Rapists deserve the death penalty.”
“He really didn’t hold that sign out very much,” though, according to YouTube user JSXS, who has uploaded a long but painfully entertaining video of the kerfuffle.
“For hours and hours, people were just walking by getting pissed,” explains JSXS at the outset of his chronicle, “which is very understandable.”
He told random women they deserved to be raped. He also asserted that “all Muslims are pedophiles!”
Brother Dean’s Christian performance art occurred on the same day that a “Take Back the Night” vigil concerning sexual assault awareness was also planned, reports the Arizona Daily Wildcat.
At one point, according to campus police, a particularly infuriated student tried to take Saxton’s sign away. The details are hazy, though, because police aren’t talking.
The veritable student on the quad interviewed by the Daily Wildcat didn’t appreciate Saxton’s behavior.
“It is free speech, but I still disagree that he should be able to call other people names and we can’t call him names,” said Paola Gonzalez, a pre-pharmacy sophomore. “He shouldn’t be able to call us names, either.”
It’s not clear what was preventing Gonzalez and other students from insulting Brother Dean. A large number of passersby did, in fact, verbally berate Saxton — who seemed to revel in the negative attention.
A number of other students groused to the administration.
Kendal Washington White, interim dean of students, confirmed to the Daily Wildcat that her office had received countless emails, phone calls and written complaints about Saxton’s public sermonizing.
“We find it to be vulgar and vile,” White told the campus rag. “However, it is protected speech. He has yet to — at this point — violate the student code of conduct.”
Based on his comments throughout the video, Saxton obviously stands athwart any kind of remotely revealing female clothing. He told the paper that he was endorsing a draconian increase in modesty in women’s fashion.
“If you dress like a whore, act like a whore, you’re probably going to get raped,” Brother Dean said.
“I think that girls that dress and act like it,” he added, “they should realize that they do have partial responsibility, because I believe that they’re pretty much asking for it.”
In the YouTube video created by JSXS, an early scene shows Saxton lounging under a shady tree before he began holding up his signs. Beside him sits a woman who is apparently known by the moniker “Sinless Sarah.”
When Saxton first debuts the signs, the smattering of people nearby make comments.
“I’m really confused how you have ‘You deserve rape,’ and then rapists are going to be killed,” observes one student who is watching things unfold as she sits barefoot on a grassy knoll.
“So people deserve rape but if they get raped, the rapist should die?” adds JSXS from behind the camera.
“What I’m saying that the girl is partially responsible,” explains Brother Dean.
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