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n this April 4, 2016, photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses the crowd during a rally at the Milwaukee Theatre in Milwaukee. A small Trump student group attempting to hold its first planning meeting clashed with protesters in Portland Thursday.

(The Associated Press)

The inaugural meeting of Portland State University's "Students for Trump" group Thursday night featured verbal confrontations and organized protests, according to multiple media reports.

According to its Facebook page, the PSU student group has just a handful of supporters.

Thursday was supposed to be a "planning meeting."

But instead, dozens of protesters turned up at the PSU student union to voice their opposition to the Republican presidential frontrunner and his student supporters Thursday.

The Vanguard, PSU's student newspaper, reported the protesters were led by PSU student activists Olivia Pace and Alyssa Pagan.

Here's what the Vanguard's Colleen Leary reported:

After and an hour and a half, most of the Trump supporters had left the original meeting table and moved to several heated discussions off to the side of the cafeteria. Protestors followed the Trump supporters back and forth across the cafeteria for about two hours.

One anti-Trump student tried to shake hands with a man wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat. He refused and said "No, I can't. We're 'enemies'." He gestured using air quotes on the word 'enemies'.

Pace and Pagan are part of the group of students who have also disrupted the PSU's Board of Trustees meetings on three consecutive occasions.

At the trustees meeting last week, PSU's

down the meeting and took over the room. The board then voted on tuition increases from an emergency communications room across campus.

Students for Trump organizer Volodymyr Kolychev told the Vanguard that he anticipated the protests. He described the planning meeting as "bait."

Willamette Week, which also had a reporter on scene, said Kolychev and the handful of supporters were all wearing Trump's red "Make America Great Again" hats.

After several hours of protests, Kolychev said the protesters hadn't swayed him. "Are you asking if I still support Trump? More so," he told the Vanguard.



-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

@andrewtheen