Friday, February 17, 2017
Must not record Leftist hate speech
A couple of months ago, a student at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California, took the following video of Olga Pere Stable-Cox, his human sexuality professor, pontificating about the 2016 election. The delightfully named Stable-Cox called the election an “act of terrorism,” labelled Mike Pence an “anti-gay human” and lamented that any American could vote for Donald Trump.
If you were wondering if there would be any repercussions for this, don’t worry. The guilty party is being punished. Peter Van Voorhis, Campus Reform:
The student who filmed his professor calling Donald Trump’s election “an act of terrorism” has received a one-semester suspension from Orange Coast College (OCC). The previously anonymous student, Caleb O’Neil, has also received a number of other sanctions for recording his professor, Olga Pere Stable-Cox, including a mandatory meeting with the Dean of Students before he is readmitted, as well as remaining on disciplinary probation for one semester upon return from suspension…
If O’Neil, who is not a member of the OCC College Republicans, fails to satisfy any of the requirements laid out by OCC, he could be expelled from the Coast Community College District for good.
All because he recorded his leftist professor saying crazy things about the election. OCC isn’t mad that she said it. They’re mad that now everybody knows about it.
O’Neil is planning to appeal this. I hope he wins. He didn’t do anything wrong, and the parents and alumni deserve to know what’s going on at that school.
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7 comments:
If he had sent the video to the secret service (inciting violence against the president) and it accidentally was published he would have had a defense but videoing someone without their consent in a non public space and publishing it has no protections. I would move because he should know he will never be graded on his merits in that college system. Besides who wants to listen to that garbage from your instructors.
MDH
MDH,
Are you trying to say that a public college is a "private space?"
The fact of the matter is a "confined forum" has much less protection than you think. Not only that, her comments were not only against the President, they were against the student as well.
The school acknowledges that there is no automatic protection against recording because it is their handbook, not the law, they are citing in the expulsion of this student. The problem is that the handbook only says you cannot "tape" people on the campus without their consent.
The rule, as it stands, is unConstitutional because it seeks to restrain the legal recording of people in public who have no expectation of privacy. For example, if the campus police were beating up a student in the middle of the quad, the idea that the recording would not be allowed in a court is ridiculous.
Furthermore, the rule only deals with "taping," and makes no overall mention of "recording." The school has since gone back and posted signs saying "no recording" in classrooms. In doing so, the school tacitly acknowledges their handbook did not cover this incident.
The school had no basis on which to suspend or expel the student. None. The teacher was off topic for the course which means her protections as part of the class syllabus goes away as well.
NOTE: as a side issue, the teacher has been receiving threats now as well. Just as her threats against the student are wrong, so are physical threats against her.
Any instructor in modern times should expect that one or more of their students will be recording their lectures as a normal practice simply because a review of the lecture later will allow the student a second opportunity to learn from the the lecture when a fuller understanding of the subject is achieved.
If the student were to release the full lecture on public media that would indeed be an incident worth punishing but when the lecture or a part of it is a mere emotional and political rant devoid of class content the instructor has no right to expect that their "captive audience" would be in full agreement or that they would not share that moment publicly.
If the college had a rule in place about requesting permission before sharing class content online (and all colleges really should have such a rule in place) even that would still not be sufficient to stand when the instructor departs from teaching since at that moment it ceased to be a class.
With the permission of the instructors, I taped all of my classes when I was a doctoral student fifty years ago. Taping of classes is not something new.
All professors, lecturers and others have no right to force their political views on students regardless of what the campus authorities profess, not even in a political class.
Anon 11:32 You so right these leftists brownshirt instructructers need t be fired and the schools sued their deffenetly violating Free Speech and need releived of their jobs make them a sanatation worker so they can clean up their big big messes they make
Darzee the Tailorbird,
Once again we see the lack of spelling, grammar and punctuation from a member of the "flock of birds."
However, the fact of the matter is that the school has a right to limit speech in the classroom. (See Tinker v. Des Moines.) If the speech is going to disrupt the educational purpose of the school, speech can be limited.
In this case, I can understand the professor not wanting to have the class recorded. This is a class on human sexuality. It is easy to imagine that what is said in the class by students and in confidence being recorded would put a damper on the exchange of information.
Yet this rant was not on the class subject matter. That's the real issue here. Can a teacher go so far off the rails and attack students who do not believe as they do? Is there any sense that the student would get a fair grade in this class with the professor saying she won't "tolerate those people (Trump supporters) in her life?"
There is no question in this case that the student broke the established rules of the class as stated in the syllabus. Those rules seem to be fair, impartial and benefit the educational experience. Not allowing the posting of the lectures or discussions on the class material seems to be a legitimate restraint of speech.
The teacher's rant was not on the class material and outside of the syllabus. Recording two minutes of a 20 minute diatribe is not a violation of any possible rule or law at the school.
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