Sinema calls protesters following her into campus bathroom 'wholly inappropriate'

"Yesterday's behavior was not legitimate protest," the Arizona Democratic senator said of the incident that disrupted the course she teaches at the university.

Published: October 4, 2021 1:10pm

Updated: October 4, 2021 4:54pm

Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema said Monday the incident this past weekend at Arizona State University in which she was interrupted while teaching a class and followed into a bathroom by protesters who had breached the building was "wholly inappropriate."

"In the 19 years I have been teaching at ASU, I have been committed to creating a safe and intellectually challenging environment for my students," she said. "Yesterday, that environment was breached. My students were unfairly and unlawfully victimized. This is wholly inappropriate."

Sinema was confronted by immigration activists who followed her from a classroom at the university, where she teaches, to a bathroom while demanding that the lawmaker take action on a "pathway to citizenship." 

Video footage of the encounter shows a small group of immigration activists, several of whom indicated that they may themselves be here illegally, following Sinema through the hallways of the university into a bathroom. They continue to berate her as she enters a bathroom stall. 

"It is unacceptable for activist organizations to instruct their members to jeopardize themselves by engaging in unlawful activities such as gaining entry to closed university buildings, disrupting learning environments, and filming students in a restroom," continued the statement by the senator.

Sinema has been intensely scrutinized by the progressive left for her failure to support the massive $3.5 trillion funding package that would pass a significant portion of president Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" agenda without the need for a single Republican vote in the Senate. 

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