Wanted: Remedial course on the First Amendment
Melissa Click will never get a job with a media outlet.
That’s a pretty cheerless fate, considering that she had a “courtesy appointment” in the Department of Journalism at the University of Missouri, one of the top training grounds in the country for aspiring reporters and writers. But Click gained her proverbial 15 minutes in the national spotlight earlier this week by trying to push student journalists away from student protesters at the school in the immediate aftermath of the resignation of Timothy R. Wolfe, the president of the University of Missouri system. Wolfe’s departure followed weeks of rancor over racial tensions on the Columbia, Mo., campus.
Click exclaimed on camera, “You need to respect the students!” She went on to suggest that the students needed “to be alone,” apparently in a “safe space” away from the intrusive press. When the student journalist correctly declined to walk away, because it was a public area and this was a news story of no small importance, Click yelled, “Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here?! I need some muscle over here!”
Click later apologized, saying she regretted her “language and strategies,” and the Department of Journalism cut her loose, though she remained an assistant professor in the university’s communications program. But it’s hard to fathom how a professor who doesn’t seem to comprehend the mission of the Fourth Estate – that its reporters and photographers have the right to be present and do their jobs when news is happening, particularly in public – can maintain credibility within a communications department.
The incident also highlights the dismaying trend among some faculty and administrators on college campuses to treat students as if they are highly fragile vessels who must be indulged, pampered and protected, whether in the form of “safe spaces,” allowing them to have “comfort animals” like rabbits, puppies or kittens in their dorm rooms to ease anxieties, offering guidelines on “acceptable” Halloween costumes or serving up “trigger warnings” in the classroom to let students know if something might rattle their tender sensibilities in readings or classroom discussions.
Simply put, students need to be treated like the adults they are. And faculty like Click need a remedial course on the basics of the First Amendment.