Hey, Mizzou, when you’re in a hole, stop digging!
Assistant Professor Melissa Click must be a lovely person — off camera, anyway. Apparently, 116 University of Missouri faculty members signed a letter in her support. This letter was released publicly in response to the letter demanding Click’s termination signed by 118 members of the Missouri General Assembly.
The faculty’s letter claims that Click has been “wronged in the media” and calls upon the university to defend her “first amendment rights of protest.”
But according to the expert opinion of Ken Paulson, one of Click’s communication colleagues, the “Carnahan Quad kerfuffle was not a First Amendment conflict.” Both the faculty letter and Paulson’s opinion piece seem to operate under the assumption that there was no “government involvement” because Click was merely acting as a private citizen during the videotaped incident.
Paulson’s piece notes his view that had the police been present, there would have been government involvement: “Police would be filing charges or providing guidance to keep the peace. It didn’t come to that.”
But while University of Missouri Police Department officers (oddly) weren’t there to maintain the peace on campus — again — at the quad during Click’s kerfuffle, that doesn’t mean the government wasn’t on the quad “providing guidance” at that time. In fact, the night before the kerfuffle unfolded, faculty members had announced that they would be at the quad that day for a “teach-in” to answer students’ questions.
And it was at that same place and time that communications Professor Click instructed students to form a human chain to physically block, intimidate and prevent members of the press from covering what was, in Paulson’s words, a “very public news event in a public space.” A government employee instructing students of a government university on government-controlled property certainly creates the appearance of government involvement to me.
I agree with Paulson that the students had no right to “carve out a space” on that public space. And the fact that the students mistakenly believed otherwise was no secret the day before Click’s kerfuffle. The students had posted a sign on that public space purporting to exclude the press from their encampment. So although I agree with the opinion of MU Faculty Council Chairman Ben Trachtenberg that Click should not be judged solely on “the worst 10 minutes of her career,” Click had more than 10 minutes to reflect on her actions that day.
One would think that the faculty hosting this “teach-in” would have instructed the students that if they wanted privacy, they needed to go somewhere, well, private. Instead, by following Professor Click’s instructions, the faculty and students of my alma matter looked like a bunch of uneducated idiots on national TV.
I respect the extraordinary effort to come to Click’s defense. But I believe that the 116 faculty members listed on Click’s letter of support are only making a bad situation worse for both Click and Mizzou — in the eyes of both the Missouri legislature and alumni of the University of Missouri. If Click’s colleagues really want to help her out, I suggest they help her find a job somewhere else.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/16e5b6e1-d3f0-5471-b3bc-8d8f7c571dc8.html