“But I also understand that she’s been out there for more than a week supporting students in the protest and helping them and that’s a great thing to do”. She issued a second statement Wednesday saying that she had resigned her appointment to the Student Publications Committee, which makes recommendations to Mizzou’svice chancellor on operations of the student-run campus newspaper The Maneater.
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“Journalism is for the people, so they can be free and self-governing”, Johnathan Thomas explained. You can claim that it was tone deaf and that the students of color were the ones who would bear the brunt of the risk by coming to his class, but as someone who was operating in good faith his intention should be strongly considered here.
But had they really wanted to support the student activists, they could have sought instead to coach students in strategies for engagement with the media. The answer is very simple: “best journalism school, and you can’t change something if you don’t come be part of it”. “You make your own choice”.
“I do not condone the acts of the faculty member that was out there”, Kurpius said. You can nap there.
Schierbecker said he felt threatened by the exchange, which took place after he documented protesters pushing back another student photographer, Tim Tai, by walking slowly into him. “It doesn’t threaten anybody else because if it’s a single-stall bathroom; you should be in there alone”. However, the protestors were in a public space and because the protestors’ “safe space” argument is an ambiguous concept that carries no legal precedent over First Amendment rights in a public setting, Tai’s First Amendment rights trumps the protestor’s request.
In a video viewed almost two million times on YouTube, Click was seen asking for assistance and for “muscle” to remove junior Mark Schierbecker, who filmed the interaction.
And this is where Assistant Professor Melissa Click, who is excruciatingly lily white by the way, comes into the picture… quite literally. She studies television and pop culture and presumably along the way acquired a few understanding of the press.
Click is an assistant professor with the MU Department of Communication in the College of Arts and Science.
“We can debate the ethics of whether I should take the photo or not later”, Tai said. “It all feels so raw”.
“There are no credible threats to campus MUPD and campus officials are on the scene”, replied the university’s official Twitter account. The university reversed that edict, but the graduate students remained active, allying with the anti-racism protests and taking steps to try to form a union.
“The stuff she teaches, and the stuff she’s written, is so ludicrous that someone would have a job in academia teaching this stuff”, says Gainor. “Let’s approach this not as full of angst and anger, but as calm journalists”.
The dean of the Missouri School of Journalism issued a statement expressing his pride in how the student handled himself during the protest.
Weimer told The Associated Press additional officers were already on campus before the university learned of the threats.
What wasn’t understandable, though, was allowing that movement to turn into a potential joke by intimidating journalists, whining about “safe spaces” and turning heavy fire on anyone who happened to not speak the correct shibboleth, do exactly what protestors demanded or “just the fuck shut up and listen”.
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On the other hand, when reporters tried to report on these developments, they found student protesters carving out a chunk of university property as a private camp, proclaiming that journalists were not welcome. Those actions contradict everything the journalism school professes to stand for. But I’m open to the argument. After all, that’s implied by free speech too. It acknowledged the First Amendment rights of reporters to be present. Protest organizers reacted by circulating fliers to educate their peers about media rights. And then it encouraged protesters to thank journalists for doing their job.
