Gonzaga students are reacting to the new hire of former University of Missouri professor Melissa Click.
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“The committee was unanimous in deciding that she would be one of the two people to whom we offered the job”, said Gonzaga’s Communications Studies Department chair, Jonathan Rossing, under whom Click will serve as a lecturer in a one-year, non-tenure-track position.
Click was a communications professor at the University of Missouri until she was sacked in February after she was filmed calling for “some muscle” to eject a student videographer from protests at the Concerned Student 1950 camp on the Columbia campus.
Click was suspended and later fired by the University earlier this year.
Meanwhile another video of her surfaced around the same time, showing her shouting and swearing at officers during a protest on October 10. Click will once again teach communications.
The protest was speaking out against a series of racially charged incidents on campus and the university’s slow response, a movement that started small but quickly ballooned into a national story when the team’s football team threatened a boycott unless the president was relieved of his job.
Student videographer Mark Schierbecker filmed the confrontation and continued recording as he went over and asked to speak to Click. “I’m not a superhero”, she told The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Elisabeth Mermann-Jozwiak, dean of Gonzaga’s College of Arts and Sciences, said in a statement to Missouri media outlets that Gonzaga officials were aware of Click’s recent past but, after a national search, deemed her “the most qualified and experienced candidate for the position”.
The news was met with scorn in many corners, as Click was seen as the face of the misguided aspects of the student protest including stifling the press attempting to cover it.
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Gonzaga University welcomes Melissa Click, Ph.D.to its faculty.
