Kids These Days:

An event at UC Irvine that should have drawn rational arguments has received only the usual emotional responses.

The event was the disruption of a Feb. 8 speech on campus by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States. Eleven students were arrested for shouting down Oren as he tried to speak about U.S.-Israel relations.

The students were arrested. So far eight of those students, who were confirmed as UCI students, have received only “disciplinary letters” from the university office of judicial affairs, despite threats ranging from expulsion to prosecution for the violation of a penal code and disturbing the peace.

This is where otherwise rational people got emotional.

Shortly after the incident, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Newport Beach), a candidate for the U.S. Senate, asked the university’s chancellor to ban the Muslim Student Union from campus.

That is a silly request. The MSU denies authorizing the protest, so not only is there no direct evidence linking the MSU directors to the protest, DeVore’s request throws the baby out with the bathwater by punishing all MSU members, instead of just the ones who allegedly broke the law.

When he announced his request, DeVore also linked the MSU to Hamas, without citing any evidence.

Expect more of this type of grandstanding from all of the candidates in the next few months.

But wait, there’s more.

In response to criticism of its handling of the disruption, UCI has hired a counselor to “help the school reassure the public it values people of all races and religions and supports free speech.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Instead of immediately throwing the book at the suspects in the alleged crime, the UCI administration wonders why we all can’t just get along.

I could have saved them the money they don’t have by providing them with that answer at no charge.

The answer is that some people just do not want to get along. Some people don’t care about listening to the other side, about preserving an invited speaker’s right to speak or anything else having to do with common respect and decency anywhere. They just want you to listen to them, and if you don’t, they will make your life miserable.

This group of people, self-centered and narrow-minded, thrives on the type of action they took during Oren’s speech.

The protest at Oren’s speech has little to do with religion and a lot to do with those who are suspected of breaking the law. The other crime here was the university’s failure to immediately discipline the protesters with anything more than a symbolic letter.

Mark Petracca, chairman of the UCI political science department, who shouted, “Shame on you” to the protesters, displayed the only sign that anyone on the UCI campus understands what went down last month.

Shame on them, indeed. And shame on anyone anywhere of any color, size, shape, religion, union or other organization who denies an invited speaker the freedom to speak. And shame on the UCI administration for not taking advantage of the incident to set an example of how it handles protesters by immediately removing them from campus for good.

STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com .