When she returned to the table, she found her concerns had been well-founded.

“I saw our sign ripped up, all our papers were on the floor, Hayden was covering his [injured] eye,” Castro told Fox News. “I said ‘Oh my God, what happened?’”

“He said that a guy had just punched him in the face.”

 

She added that when she tweeted about the incident, she received hateful messages from people applauding the violence.

“One woman called me a white supremacist,” she said. “I said ‘Wait, I’m Latina!’”

 

Castro said that while she has come to expect taunts from other students over her political views, Tuesday’s violence had a chilling effect.

 

“I was shocked,” she said. “You’d expect students at Berkeley to be smarter, to be more open about different points of view.”

 

Campus Reform quoted Williams as saying: “Some students nearby tabling were laughing, even one guy was smiling while I was being attacked and trying to hand me his flyer as a joke. The idea is free speech has consequences.... which include you getting assaulted if they find you promoting ideas others don't agree with.”

 

Alex Szarka, a junior who happened to be passing by when the altercation broke out, filmed it to ensure that there would be documentation and that the man who punched Williams is held accountable, he told Fox News.

“I was walking by when I saw it, it escalated so quickly,” Szarka said. “The Turning Point USA table had signs that on a campus like Berkeley, would be seen as provocative. I was surprised to see [the reaction] be this bad. I would like to see the guy get arrested, and expelled immediately. In any other situation, without the politics, this would absolutely be a very well-publicized thing. I was in disbelief.”