At one point or another, every one of us will face someone who has such different views from our own that our first reaction will be purely emotional. Sometimes we can't help that sort of reaction; it's excusable, but it's never the most effective way to get a point across.

Generally, once one person has caved into his or her emotions, the other side has won. Yet educated college students still fail to realize just how detrimental this sort of reaction is to proving a point.

Professor Paul Derengowski of Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Texas recently resigned after two Muslim students disrupted his World Religions class and the college refused to fail the students in the class. According to the report, the students were yelling at the professor, scaring other students and making them uncomfortable. The two students who protested were offended by the professor's lectures on Islam and claimed that he was only focusing on the negative aspects of the religion.

While Derengowski says that all of his lessons are approved by the department administrator, he also runs a website in which he names Islam, Mormonism and Scientology as cults.

Still, he claims that his teachings are purely based on fact and that his own personal opinions have no bearing on the content of his lessons.

Situations like these usually have to be treated delicately. Religion tends to have roots in many aspects of one's life, and even something that does not seem offensive can rub someone the wrong way. The more invested someone is in a topic, especially religion, the more vigorously they tend to defend their position.

Yet we all have issues that affect us personally more than they may affect others, and what may seem like a lack of common sense to one may seem reasonable to another.

In this particular case, it doesn't seem like we know enough to judge whether one side was objectively right or wrong. I find it hard to believe that the professor's opinions wouldn't affect his teachings, even if it's something as simple as what material he chooses to cover. I also doubt the effectiveness of yelling and screaming at a professor in front of an entire class. Still, it doesn't matter who's right or who's wrong.

We know that our professors have opinions, and it'd be foolish to deny it. Those opinions will likely permeate the teaching of the course at least in subtle ways, but as long as the professor doesn't lie or skew facts and presents a fair picture, there shouldn't be an issue. Our job as students is to learn, and the more we learn, the more critically we should think.

Therefore, we should constantly question the opinions of our instructors, the way in which they present the information and the perspective they may be coming from.

It's not a lack of respect; it's a sign that the university as a whole has been providing us with a strong enough education to think for ourselves.

As for the students who protested, they should know better.

A huge part of the reason why we go to college is to arm ourselves with enough knowledge and opportunities to stand for something. Rather than get in a professor's face if you disagree with his teachings, be civil, discuss and assert your knowledge and your opinion respectfully. Remember the students walking out of Noam Chomsky's lecture on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Their anger was evident, but I learned nothing of use from their gesture except that those students are unable to separate emotion and opinion. The party that keeps their cool will always look better.

If the Muslim students really wanted to paint a different perspective of Islam for the class, they shouldn't cause such a scene that other students become fearful. They should have intelligently and calmly asserted their points and combatted the instructor in a one-on-one discussion.

Instead, they gave the professor an "I told you so" moment. Something else to remember: Other students will likely side with the party that isn't yelling and already has his Ph.D. The fact of the matter is that emotion is the enemy of reason.

That doesn't mean that we should be robots about topics that personally touch us, but we should use that connection to fuel our passion in learning about a topic and becoming involved.

That emotion can motivate us, but our emotion alone won't make others care and it certainly won't win over those who disagree.

They want you to become emotional because it means that they've exhausted your knowledge and that you are admitting defeat.

Once you do something like walk out of a respected person's lecture or yell at your professor, you are making a poor decision in the moment and the future as well.

Those sorts of actions make you seem irrational and send the message that you have no interest in hearing the opinions of others. Instead of passion, people see immaturity and closed-mindedness.

There are issues that infuriate me. They make me want to yell at those who disagree, vandalize their property and let everyone know how I feel. But I'll never do that because it only empowers those I oppose. Sure, reading books, informing people and getting involved in righting wrongs may not be terribly cathartic, but it's progress.