Entertainer Brent Scarpo told students’ Thursday night they need to generate hate and fear into a learning experience, as opposed to violence.
Brent Scarpo, creator of the documentary and lecture program, was the speaker for the program.
As a figure in the entertainment field, cast directing for movies such as The Shawshank Redemption, That Thing You Do and others, Scarpo developed a presentation about the death of Matthew Sheppard in 1998.
Sheppard, who was gay, was beaten and tied to a fence post in the middle of a field in Wyoming and left to die.
Scarpo said the purpose of his project is to begin productive discussions about hate in this country, and to help people understand how hate affects their lives and society as a whole.
“It’s OK to be ignorant, we need to embrace ignorance,” he said. “This way it gives you the reason to go up to someone and gain knowledge about it,” he said.
Part of the emotional documentary included Matthew’s mother. She spoke about the obvious danger that Matthew felt as he was being lured from the bar, and how he he liked to push the voice of fear away from himself and that “he finally heard the voice when they were strapping him to the fence.”
“It’s OK to be fearful,” Scarpo explained. It allows you to step back and evaluate what is going on, he said.
Scarpo also discussed the tragedy of James Byrd Jr., a black man who was chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged for three miles and dropped of at a black church in Texas.
Scarpo tried to open people’s minds to the possibility that hate can be regenerated and put to good use, perhaps to learn about people who are different from us.
“As human beings, it is my belief that we were not born to hate,” he said.

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