Higher Education in California.

An angry college-aged woman steals a Make America Great Again hat off the head of a fellow student. That's grade-school stuff. What comes next, isn't...

“This is mine. You do not get to take other people’s property that is legally theirs in this county,” Matthew Vitale, a member of the school’s College Republicans club, sternly tells Edith Macias.

“Man, f--- your laws,” Macias snaps back.

“I have a freedom of speech to wear this hat,” Vitale later says.

“Your f---ing freedom of speech is genocide, homeboy! Is that what you are trying to represent?” she replies.

Vitale said in a video posted after the incident that he was attending an annual school-organized meeting where leaders of student groups listen to presentations about combating hazing and sexual harassment. A self-described Trump supporter, Vitale adds that he usually wears the “Make America Great Again” on campus and sometimes gets looks from other students, but was startled when Macias, whom he says he never met, yanked off his hat and sprinted out of the classroom.

The calm and collected staff at the school’s student life offices managed to take the hat away from Macias and return it to Vitale, but not before Macias is caught on video protesting their actions.

“F--- your f—-ing freedom of speech, boy,” Macias says to Vitale. “Your freedom of speech is literally killing a lot of people out there. That’s what it is. Because you’re out there wearing hats like these that promote laws and legislations that literally kill and murder in the masses, people of color.”

Macias says at one point in the exchange that she would like to burn the hat. In another heated moment, Vitale tells Macias to leave the country if she doesn’t like it.

“What do you mean? I was born here….where the f—- am I gonna go?” Macias says.

“Go to Mexico, go wherever the hell you want,” Vitale responds.

“You don’t know s—- about me! What do you mean Mexico?” Macias fires back.

A campus staff member then intervenes, trying to diffuse the situation and offering Macias a space where she can file her grievances to campus officials: “Let’s calm down a little bit, we can talk as a trio here."

The viral video ends after one of the employees gives the hat back to Vitale.

“Oh my God, you’re going to keep letting him wear it? That just shows how the f--- UCR is and the education system. It’s geared to benefit white people, white people, not me,” Macias says as she protests the move and accuses the staff of not being neutral.

“In the premises of the university I deal with microaggressions on the daily, as do other people of color and you have people out there wearing hats like those, y’all don’t say s—- about it,” she adds. “Make America Great Again? Really? Lynches, mass genocides, mass deportations. Constant killings, and y’all are just gonna shut the f—- up?”

“I don’t want to talk to none of y’all” Macias says as she's met at the door by men who appear to be campus police officers.

What happened next?

Now, Vitale is pressing charges. After campus police informed Vitale that Macias’ allegedly stealing his hat would constitute a felony theft charge because she took it off of his head, he decided to take a stand.

“I do want to send a message,” Vitale explained. “I am not vindictive, I am not vengeful, but people especially in my generation need to realize you can’t do things like this because you don’t like what someone is saying or wearing.”

Vitale, who stated in the video he is half-Nicaraguan, rejects Macias’ claims that wearing the hat amounts to a form of hate speech.

“Free speech is under attack on campus,” Vitale argued. “As cliche as it sounds, the facts of our laws and our Constitution … don’t care about what you feel. For millennials everywhere who believe their feelings give them the right to step on the rights of others — you are sadly misguided. That is not the real world.”

In response to Vitale’s video going viral, the university released a statement reaffirming their commitment to free speech. “Coequal to our dedication to mutual respect is our commitment to free speech and the free exchange of ideas,” the message read. “A university requires an environment where students and scholars can freely express ideas and pursue knowledge, while also promoting respectful dialogue among individuals or groups with opposing viewpoints.”

We'd better figure out a way to confine such anger to California. Ms. Macias will not fare as well, I suspect, in the other law-abiding states in our nation.

If you can't assimilate and respect the American rules of law, you gotta go!