CCSU Professor Called Police After Student Presentation

[jimlongley]

There goes my delusions of college campuses being open forums for free-debate.

When I attended college (years ago) I found they were very open to free thinking as long as it matched the professors and administrations approved method of free thinking. Doesn't look like much has changed.

I spent weeks preparing my semester paper for English Composition during my short and unlamented college career back in 1965 and '66, the paper was to be on a subject of your choice and a minimum of 20 pages, maximum 30 pages. I did what I felt was a well researched paper on the history of the development of firearms, including footnotes, references and a pretty extensive bibliography, 28 pages long (not the biblio, the whole paper). The professor took off an entire letter grade for "inappropriate subject matter."

I filed a formal complaint and that professor and I butted heads for the whole next semester and I finished the year with a C-. When I went back, years later, to get a transcript, I found that my grade had been entered in the archive as an F, and that a couple of other grades had been whited out and overwritten. Even presenting my original report card showing the grades was fruitless, they said it was too easy for someone to fake up something like that (this in 1983, well before the digital capabilities we are used to today) and they refused to correct my records.

Guess who had been promoted to dean and registrar in 1967? I still have trouble believing that someone could be so shallow and petty as to resort to changing the grades of someone who was obviously not destined to be a college standout, but years of experience have taught me that it's not that uncommon.

...and this travesty of academia took place in what state?

Noo Yawk

My yankee carpetbagger parents kidnapped me from my native San Antonio when I was too young to defend myself and forced me to grow up outside of Albany, NY.

I actually only finished the '65 - '66 year, I dropped out halfway through my second year to pursue a career as a volunteer firefighter and beer drinker while waiting for my draft notice to arrive. The prof in question was promoted right about the time I left and I actually had to interview with him as to why I was dropping out - I told him it was at least partly his fault and left without signing the papers he was insisting I needed to sign. The thing that really torques me up about it is that I had an A in Electricity and Electronics, and bull in Math, and Physics as well as the C- in English and a D in Social something or other, I had not failed a course the whole first year, unlike high school.

The young lady that showed me my grades was trying to hold cards over other people's grades, this was a ledger book with students alphabetized by year and I was told that it was not ever going to be in their computer as they had decided to only computerize transcripts after some cutoff date. Anyway, while she was trying to hold the cards, they kept slipping and I saw others who had also had whiteout applied.

According to documents I received when I tried to fight for the correct grades, the ledger had been recorded at the end of each school year and then stored in a controlled access area so there could not possibly be any changes like those I was disputing, the only time corrections were allowed was during transcription and only with the transcriber's and dean's initials. What I saw was the official record for both of my years after I dropped out. I never noticed any initials next to my ledger line, but I only really had a few second glance before I told the young lady there had to be a mistake and she closed the book.

I was not doing as well the second year to begin with, and actually arrived for school on the first day of deer season to find classes canceled due to a student gathering to protest the escalation of the war in Viet Nam. I got mad and went home and grabbed my stuff and went north to hunt deer for a week, and when I came back I quit. BTW, the only stuff I had to get at home was camping gear, the laws being what they were at the time, my deer rifle was already in the car.

[fickman]

Fox News picked up this story!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,504524,00.html

Professor Takes Heat for Calling Cops on Student Who Discussed Guns in Class
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
By Maxim Lott

A professor in Connecticut reported one of her students to the police after he gave a class presentation on why students and teachers should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus. Now, free speech activists say the professor’s actions are what really need to be investigated.

Last October, John Wahlberg and two classmates at Central Connecticut State University gave an oral presentation for a communications class taught by Professor Paula Anderson. The assignment was to discuss a “relevant issue in the media,” and the students presented their view that the death toll in the April 2007 Virginia Tech shooting massacre would have been lower if professors and students had been carrying guns.

That night, police called Wahlberg, a 23-year-old senior, and asked him to come to the station. When he arrived, they they read off a list of firearms that were registered in his name and asked where he kept them. Guns are strictly prohibited on the CCSU campus and residence halls, but Wahlberg says he lives 20 miles off-campus and keeps his gun collection locked up in a safe. No further action was taken by police or administrators.

“I don’t think that Professor Anderson was justified in calling the CCSU police over a clearly non-threatening matter,” Wahlberg told The Recorder, the CCSU student newspaper that first reported the story. “Although the topic of discussion may have made a few individuals uncomfortable, there was no need to label me as a threat.”

Wahlberg declined to comment further to FOXNews.com, saying he did not want more media attention.

According to The Recorder, Anderson cited safety as her reason for calling the police.

“It is also my responsibility as a teacher to protect the well-being of our students, and the campus community at all times,” she told The Recorder. “As such, when deemed necessary because of any perceived risks, I seek guidance and consultation from the Chair of my Department, the Dean and any relevant University officials.”

Anderson did not respond to calls from FOXNews.com. Campus police forwarded requests to university spokesman Mark McLaughlin, who declined to comment, citing Wahlberg’s privacy.

Robert Shibley, vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), said Anderson's actions appeared to be out of line.

“If all he did was discuss reasons for allowing guns on campus, it seems a bit much to call the police and grill him about it,” Shibley said. “If you go after students for just discussing an idea, that goes against everything a university is supposed to stand for.”

Shibley said FIRE has seen many more cases of hair-trigger responses by administrators over anything gun-related since the Virginia Tech shooting.

In 2007, Shibley noted, a student at Hamline University in Minnesota was suspended after writing a letter to an administrator arguing that carrying concealed weapons on campus may help prevent tragedies like the one at Virginia Tech. The student was allowed to return only after undergoing a psychological evaluation, he said.

Shibley also cited an incident at Colorado College last year in which campus administrators denounced a flyer as "threatening and demeaning content" because it mentioned guns. He said the students who produced the flyer were found guilty of violating the school’s violence policy, which was added to their school records.

“It is, of course, important that administrators identify real threats to students,” Shibley said. “But they need to use logic to discern whether a threat is real.”

But Jerold Duquette, an associate professor of political science at CCSU who sits on the Faculty Senate Committee on Academic Freedom, say the Wahlberg case is not so clear-cut.

“This is a situation where both sides can come up with a reasonable explanation,” Duquette said.

“[Wahlberg] certainly has a reason to complain, since he didn’t do anything directly threatening. But I wouldn’t say the administration has a reason to sanction or punish the professor or the police.... I don’t know if I would have done anything differently in the situation.”

Katie Kasprzak, a spokeswoman for the group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, suggested that the professor called the police because she disagreed with Wahlberg’s political views.

"Critics of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus argue that colleges and universities are dedicated to the free flow of ideas,” she said. “Yet when a student gives a class presentation on a relevant issue in the media, it is acceptable to label the student as a threat? The only threat posed was a threat to the professor’s personal beliefs.”

Duquette said there was no evidence to support that.

“I think a lot of people see this as a liberal professor going after a student because he likes guns. I don’t know if that’s the case,” Duquette said, adding that more would need to be known about the incident.

[BigRon]

Our tax dollars at work. Those idiotic students commenting on the story are products of our fine education system. When I read news like this, the Beatles tune "Back in the USSR" gets stuck in my head. Where is my free country and what the crap have the liberals done to it??!!!

I miss the past. Jeff Cooper's quote has never been truer, "The past is like another country, they do things differently there."

[Oldgringo]

Before everyone gets wrapped all the way around the axle, keep in mind that this happened in Conneticutt, home of Senator Chris Dodd. Conneticutt is adjacent to Massachussetts, home of Senator Ted Kennedy and Rep. Barney Frank. Quite clearly, there are a large group of people in this area who do not think nor act rationally. Apparently, this institution of higher learning and free thought falls in the irrational category also.