Actually, given that this footage came from body cameras worn by police officers — a key reform pushed after several controversial police shootings — this counts as doubly ironic. University of Missouri professor Melissa Click faces disciplinary action from Mizzou and a community-service order over her threat to get “some muscle” to attack a student journalist on public property reporting on a protest camp. Now video has emerged of Click at an October 2015 protest, meeting “some muscle” trying to clear a road for a homecoming parade, and not exactly enjoying the experience (via Legal Insurrection):
As the police arrive, about half the group disperses down the street while the others cluster by the edge of the sidewalk. When officers urge protesters to leave the street, Butler throws his hands up in front of an officer to guard the remaining protesters and begins arguing with him.
“We’re done,” Butler tells another officer. The first officer then puts an arm between himself and Butler and begins walking Butler backward, toward the sidewalk.
The officer walks back into the street, leaving Click to thrust her small five-foot frame between Butler and the second officer. With arms raised, she berates the officers for physically handling the protesters.
The first officer returns and reaches his hand toward Click’s shoulder. “Get your fucking hand off me!” Click exclaims before recoiling and apparently careening her body into the officer.
It’s always enlightening when those who demand big government come into contact with it, eh? In this case, it’s not even a particularly compelling moment of police action. Mizzou’s homecoming parade got interrupted by a blockade of the road, presumably by the same “Concerned Students 1950” organization behind the November protest in which Click’s threat and assault took place. Police did not shut down the protest but instead directed protesters back to the sidewalk, physically moving a few of them back when they did not respond. Click was one of those protesters, trying to position herself as a shield and screaming epithets when police moved her back along with everyone else.
Click had hoped to avoid further penalties for the November incident. Good luck with that:
MU assistant professor of communication Melissa Click’s interaction with a Columbia police officer during the university’s Homecoming Parade on Oct. 10 warrants a conversation with the University of Missouri System Board of Curators, MU Interim Chancellor Hank Foley said Sunday night in an emailed statement.
“Her conduct and behavior are appalling, and I am not only disappointed, I am angry, that a member of our faculty acted this way,” Foley said in a release from the MU News Bureau. “Her actions caught on camera last October, are just another example of a pattern of misconduct by Dr. Click—most notably, her assault on one of our students while seeking ‘muscle’ during a highly volatile situation on Carnahan Quadrangle in November.” …
“We must have high expectations of members of our community, and I will address these new revelations with the Board of Curators as they work to complete their own review of the matter,” Foley said in his statement.
That doesn’t sound very promising for someone hoping to get off lightly for threatening students. Until then, Foley had offered a more conciliatory approach; it was the Board of Curators, not Foley, who suspended Click for the November incident. This public expression of anger and disgust sounds like a signal to Click for some resumé updates to test the waters in the Fifty Shades of Grey analytics market.
Speaking of markets, Mizzou’s tanking in the recruitment markets after all of the notoriety of the past four months:
A season of unrest at the University of Missouri has taken a toll on the school’s image both in and out of state, leading to a significant decline in projected enrollment figures for incoming freshmen. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the university expects to welcome roughly 900 fewer incoming students in the fall of 2016 than it did in 2015. …
Mizzou’s director of admissions Barbara Rupp told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the school’s reputation has been particularly hurt among out-of-state students, from whom deposits toward tuition are down 25 percent, as the university has become a national symbol for strained race relations and what some see as political correctness gone out of control.
“Because those students are geographically removed from the campus, they don’t really have a sense of what’s going on and they are relying on what they are seeing and hearing in the media,” Rupp said. “And it’s not particularly positive.”
When this is the face of your organization, what do you expect?
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