“Anybody who came against me with a dissident opinion, I was right in their face,” Ekpunobi said. “I was screaming at them, ‘how dare you?’, ‘you’re a racist,’ ‘you’re a bigot,’ ‘you’re a fascist’; the language that now gets thrown at me,” Ekpunobi said.

After graduating high school, Ekpunobi was still involved in and working for liberal organizations. However, she recounted three “strikes” which led to her ideological shift.

Strike one, she said, came during a liberal organization’s meeting she was part of at the time, when they asked white people at the meeting not to speak so marginalized members could.

“The leader said she wanted to give space to, ‘the most oppressed people in the room… and by oppressed, I mean Black, I mean brown, I mean gay, I mean trans.’ And again, that was fine, that was the ideology I subscripted to. She finished by saying, ‘to all the white, cisgender, heterosexual people in this room, don’t talk at all. You’ve had the stage for long enough and you’re done in this conversation.’”

Ekpunobi did not agree with this and recounted viewing that moment as “strike one.”

She said “strike two” occurred after she was pulled over by a policeman who did not ticket her, although she had been speeding a bit. She described how her body had begun shaking when she was first pulled over, keeping her hands at 10-and-2 on the wheel and finding her worries unfounded. She described how the policeman assured her he was not there to hurt her, although she had been told growing up, officers treated Black people harsher, she said.

“Strike three” came while she was working for a liberal organization during the time where the news of sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh broke out and her boss deemed Kavanaugh guilty “immediately.”

“In the court of public opinion, he was guilty immediately,” Ekpunobi said. “[My boss] looked me dead in the face and said, ‘Well, he’s a white frat-boy type. He did it. He should hang.”

This third “strike” caused Ekpunobi to leave the organization in the winter of 2018, thus marking the beginning of her conservative ideology switch. She began researching on the internet, where she first came across PragerU. It wouldn’t be until a video of Ekpunobi denouncing white privilege got notable attention on the social media app TikTok that she would get the opportunity to work for PragerU.

Ekpunobi also discussed her views that mainstream media is controlled mostly by leftist media organizations while the right only has FOX; social medias like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram being leftist; schools pushing for CRT (Critical Race Theory) and diversity, equity and inclusion teachings; “Big pharma” and the American Medical Association being “more concerned about police brutality in America than they are about diabetes, cancer, even COVID-19”; COVID-19 being “a really great excuse to take advantage of people’s freedoms and liberties”; the gender wage gap not being a reality in the U.S.; Marxism having a hold in America.

Near the end of her speech, Ekpunobi said she believes conservatives and those with right-leaning political views were the counterculture, as opposed to liberals and “the left.”

“Everybody [on “the left”] will look at you and go, ‘Well, I know this feels like chaos; I know it looks crazy that you can’t say this certain word anymore; I know it sounds crazy that you don’t know what a man or a woman is anymore; I know it sounds crazy that we’ve alienated [and] stratified everybody based on race, that we’ve created a racially Marxist country; I know it looks like chaos, but it’s normal. I promise you it’s normal,’” Ekpunobi said.

“In my personal opinion, I was very surprised that the university was allowing them to come; I was kind of sickened,” Schultz said. “But then I realized, anyone can argue that something’s hate speech and I don’t think censorship is necessarily the answer. I just believe that our protests will hopefully tell students these events can go on, just don’t go and eventually they will stop.”

Dr. Jonathan Locust, associate vice president of the equity and inclusive excellence office, also did not agree in censorship in this case.

“I’m not opposed to this speaker coming. Now, do I agree [with PragerU and Ekpunobi’s views]? Absolutely not, but I’m not opposed to it.”

Locust went on to describe personal experiences in which he heard out other individuals with opposing views to his own and having positive experiences come out of it, which he hoped would be the case with Oct. 21’s coinciding events.

The speaker event, which began a few minutes late, went well past 9 p.m. with a Q&A session at the end of Epkunobi’s speech. Some student protestors remained outside until this time as well, bundling in blankets outside of Somsen.

Epkunobi’s speech was well attended by community members, with about half of the 480 free seats/tickets being reserved, according to Aldrich. Vice President of Student Life, Denise McDowell, was reportedly seen at the event among other administrative leaders.

McDowell said she connected with others on campus to monitor and ensure “campus protocol was followed and enforced,” although many attendees of the indoor club event were maskless.

This was a concern Schultz had expressed in the week leading up to the events, but it is unclear if action can or will be taken to address the lack of masks worn at the speaker event.