Sandy MaloneTempe, AZ – Several student groups at Arizona State University (ASU) have demanded the school expel 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse for being a “racist murderer.”
Rittenhouse, who killed two men and wounded a third during the Jacob Blake riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August of 2020, was acquitted of all the charges against him by a jury on Nov. 19.
Students for Socialism ASU announced in a tweet on Friday that the group was holding a “rally against racist murderer Kyle Rittenhouse being permitted on our campus” on Dec. 1 at the Nelson Fine Arts Center.
The tweet billed the events as a “rally and protest to get murderer Kyle Rittenhouse off our campus.”
But Rittenhouse was registered for an online class and doesn’t even live in Arizona.
“Even with a not-guilty verdict from a flawed ‘justice’ system – Kyle Rittenhouse is still guilty to his victims and the families of those victims. Join us to demand from ASU that those demands be met to protect students from a violent blood-thirsty murderer,” Students for Socialism posted beneath a list of demands that included “withdraw Kyle Rittenhouse from ASU.”
Join us and rally against racist murderer Kyle Rittenhouse being permitted on our campus – Wednesday at 3:30 outside the Nelson Fine Arts Center on campus pic.twitter.com/4Hs3JxRqtY
— Students for Socialism ASU 🚩 (@SFSASU) November 26, 2021
Students for Justice in Palestine posted the same tweet, and the Multicultural Solidarity Coalition and Mecha de ASU have also signed on to the list of demands, KATV reported.
A Students for Socialism ASU spokesperson told FOX News that the end goal was to tell the university administration they didn’t feel safe knowing that a “mass shooter” had been admitted to the school.
“The goal of these demands is to let the ASU administration know that we as the ASU community do not feel safe knowing that a mass shooter, who has expressed violent intentions about ‘protecting property’ over people, is so carelessly allowed to be admitted to the school at all,” the spokesperson said. “Our campus is already unsafe as is, and we would like to abate this danger as much as possible.”
But Rittenhouse claimed self-defense and was acquitted of murder and all other charges in a jury trial.
The Students for Socialism ASU chapter spokesperson told FOX News the verdict in the Rittenhouse trial “effectively gives right-winged individuals the license to kill other individuals who protest for human rights.”
“Rittenhouse took the lives of innocent people with the intent to do so — by strapping an assault rifle to himself in a crowd of unarmed citizens. That is the textbook definition of intention,” the student group’s spokesman said.
One of Rittenhouse’s attackers was pointing a pistol at him at the time he was shot.
“The decision made by the court is one of thousands of cases that have been influenced by biased judges, predominantly white juries, and mistakes inherent in a judicial system founded off of injustice to begin with,” the spokesperson told FOX News.
The three men shot by Rittenhouse were all white.
Rittenhouse has threatened legal action against those who continue to falsely label him a white supremacist, the New York Post reported.
ASU has said that Rittenhouse isn’t a regular student at the college, The Guardian reported.
“Kyle Rittenhouse has not gone through the ASU admissions process. He is not currently enrolled in any classes at ASU,” the university said.
ASU has said that Rittenhouse was enrolled in a class for “non-degree seeking students” who might later apply to a degree program at the school, The Guardian reported.
The teen’s attorneys have said the shootings occurred when he was in Kenosha to help clean graffiti off school buildings that had been vandalized during the anti-police riots when a friend asked him to help provide security for a car dealership.
Rittenhouse, then 17 years old, brought a medic kit and an AR-15 rifle that a friend had purchased for him with his stimulus check and told reporters on the scene he was there to help anybody who was hurt.
At one point, he left the car dealership to provide medical aid to a protester and then found himself blocked from returning to where his friends were.
His attorneys have said Rittenhouse was pursued through the streets of Kenosha and shot three people – killing two – in self-defense.
On Nov. 10, one of the men whom Rittenhouse shot that night testified that he had pointed his gun at the teenager before the boy shot him, CNN reported.
“When you were standing three to five feet from him with your arms up in the air, he never fired, right?” defense attorney Corey Chirafisi asked Gaige Grosskreutz, whom Rittenhouse shot in the right bicep.
“Correct,” Grosskreutz said.
“It wasn’t until you pointed your gun at him, advanced on him with your gun – now your hand is down pointed at him — that he fired, right?” Chirafisi asked.
“Correct,” Grosskreutz responded.
Grosskreutz testified that he was carrying a pistol concealed that night even though his conceal carried permit wad expired, CNN reported.
He also admitted that he lied to investigators when he claimed his gun had fallen out of his pants earlier in the evening.
The prosecution clearly surprised prosecutors when they put Rittenhouse on the stand because Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger had to ask for a break to go back to his office first.
Rittenhouse, for his part, fell apart in sobs on the stand when Binger he was being walked through the shootings on the stand.
“I did what I had to do to stop the person who was attacking me,” the 18 year old told the jury.
“By killing them?” Binger asked.
“Two of them passed away but I stopped the threat from attacking me,” Rittenhouse replied.
“By using deadly force?” Binger asked.
“I used deadly force,” Rittenhouse answered the prosecutor. “… I didn’t know if it was going to kill them. But I used deadly force to stop the threat that was attacking me.”
A Kenosha County jury found Rittenhouse not guilty on all counts after deliberating for 23 hours, CNN reported.
Rittenhouse had pleaded not guilty to six felony charges, including first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide and first-degree attempted intentional homicide.
Holly Matkin
