Aside from the logistical nightmare that the Republican National Committee presidential debate will bring to parking Thursday — for which students and employees pay — there is the ethical question of whether the debate is a wise decision for such a diverse campus.

This is particularly significant given the inflammatory remarks made by the leading candidates against many minority groups who are largely represented on campus.

Those supporting the RNC debate at UH say it is a sign that the University is embracing the fluidity of free speech rights. That to invite such candidates who have demonstrated public stances, which have also been assaulted by the mainstream press as racist, bigoted, misogynistic and Islamophobic, is to demonstrate a tolerance for the uglier forms of free speech. This helps inculcate students a deeper understanding of true freedom, and that to tolerate such intolerance somehow elevates us and adds meaningfully to the collegiate learning experience.

I respectfully disagree.

It’s important to remember that with any rights, we all too frequently forget, come duties. In ethics this is known as the correlativity of rights and duties: two sides of the same coin. But “duties” get very little play in the popular imagination.

The mere possession of a right is not enough in a free and democratic society. One must also demonstrate his mature appreciation for that right, ethically and morally, and not abuse it in the name of liberty. Using one’s free speech rights in order to incite rioting or mob rule, for example, is not guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. Yet this is exactly what Donald Trump has done to a scandalous degree at more than one of his campaign rallies, causing some citizens to physically attack others simply for disagreeing with the candidates’ position.

Consider, for example, last October’s Trump rally in Miami, where a student protester was savagely set upon and dragged to the ground by his collar and then kicked as Trump looked on and his supporters cheered.

Then, at Trump’s November campaign rally in Birmingham, when a Black Lives Matter protester and local student was physically assaulted, which Trump not only encouraged during the event, but later justified, telling a reporter, “Maybe (he) should have been roughed up. It was disgusting what he was doing.”

What is to be gained by exposing UH students to a discourse on a public stage involving practitioners of language which divides and inflames citizens to mob rule and baser instincts rather than unify them? What elevated lesson could UH students possibly extract from watching such a display of incivility which has typically characterized the RNC debates and rallies thus far?

A positive image worthy of an institution as co-ed and ethnically diverse as UH with its Tier One aspirations? I think not.

Alex Colvin is the president of Gun Free UH and a history senior.

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“Guest column: GOP debate isn’t good for UH” was originally posted on The Daily Cougar