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Prof. calls police after student discusses guns in class
Here's the story.
"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.”"
hat tip to readers Jim Kindred and Bret Gallo...
16 Comments | Leave a comment
I appreciate the previous posters willingness to stand up for a students right to discuss the proper place of firearms in this world but i believe you may be a bit over doing it. Gun owners are given the reputation that we cannot carry on a professional conversation, nor can we control our temper. One of the main reasons that many schools do not allow concealed carry on campus is because they believe there will be issues like this where "gun people" cannot control their temper or anger and thusly they may lash out at someone and if they have a gun on them, they may use it.
As responsible gun owners we must be very careful to always make our voices heard but we must do so in such a way that other people cannot use it against us.
just my thoughts,
... disagree completely with Jake's perspective.
The professor used her power to intimidate the student. She then further encouraged the police to overstep their authority and harass a citizen.
She should be fired.
fired only after a damn good spanking for being a tantrum throwing brat.
Better off taking this to court. Only hurdle he'd run into is being accused of "creating a public disturbance"...which is also the charge you get in this state for open carry with a pistol and revolver permit. It's legal as long as nobody gets scared or feels intimidated...vague enough that they could probably charge him
Dave D., you don't realize what a hostile environment the CSU system is for students. A professor can fabricate an "offense" and get a student expelled. The actions you suggest would have that end result.
My comments, reposted from another forum:
As a graduate of the CSU system (not the Central campus), I learned long ago that this sort of thing is common in academia, and in the CSU system in particular.
Do the math: Academic institution (with all the liberal bias that entails) PLUS the added bonus of being a state government institution that accepts federal funds. Result: Accountability for faculty & admin = Nonexistent.
One CSU campus lost the ability to write checks for payroll and other expenses because an audit caught the president (a former crooked mayor) taking money from scholarship funds and using it to create cushy jobs for his political cronies. One CSU campus covered up the rape of a female student by a professor who (falsely) claimed to be a rape crisis counselor and abused his position of trust. Without talking to the victim, they tried to let the professor resign without filing criminal charges!
Speaking from personal experience, professors in the CSU system regularly abuse their positions and stifle differing opinions with the apparatus of university administration as their eager accomplice. It’s almost impossible to get a professor disciplined for misbehavior.
A leftist professor of a class I took routinely graded essays with political & profane diatribes, and singled out students who did not toe his line for ridicule in class, and lower grades. When I posed a polite question about how attendance, participation and coursework factored into his grading policies (a conversation with no raised voices which took place in a crowded public area with many bystanders) I was charged with threatening this professor, singing racist songs to him (!), using racial epithets, and a subjected to a judicial hearing to determine if I would be expelled. (We are both white, btw.)
The only factor which kept me from being expelled was the tape recording I made of the entire conversation, which contradicted his claims completely. No shouting, no threats, no epithets, no singing. (Taping face to face conversations is perfectly legal in CT, if one is a party to the conversation). His offensive grading comments were ignored. When I listened to the charges, and then announced that I had recorded the entire incident, the faces of the professor, and the judicial officer, were a mixture of alarm, disappointment and fear. I wish I had a picture.
I also wish I had a videotape of the judicial officer when we re-convened the hearing days later, as he told me no action would be taken against me, but spent a lot of time expressing regret that I could not be punished for making the recording. Booting me out of school was the only thing he was interested in. I felt like I was in an alternate reality, where up is really down.
While no action was taken against this professor, he was later let go for making sexually explicit and offensive comments to a female student who was married to a powerful city official. He is still sneaking from adjunct faculty position to adjunct faculty position at other schools around the country, still unable to get tenure. And according to ratemyprofessor.com (which was not around when I was in school), still a bully and a jerk.
The apparatchik who wanted me booted? Terminal cancer.
Karma? Who knows.
I'm no lawyer but I'd be really curious how campus police came up with a list of Mr. Wahlberg's firearms. I don't care for lawsuits but it appears Mr. Wahlberg has a basis for a civil suit against the university based on invasion of privacy and misrepresentation to access state records. The only thing these apparatchiks understand is when it costs them money.
"According to The Recorder, Anderson cited safety as her reason for calling the police."
So I assume that if a professor or student were to discuss the rights of Palestinians or "undocumented workers", or the case for repeal of some drug laws, it would be appropriate to report him or her to the authorities as a potential terrorist, smuggler of illegal aliens or drug trafficker.
The professor, and I use that term lightly, is an adjunct, not full time, BUT. For background, I teach full time in an East Coast University and our campus police are a full police department as it is a state school.
Now that student can easily go to the dean of students and file a complaint against the teacher and actually should have a lawyer contact the dean about it. They will get on her butt real quick. If she was a tenured or tenured track professor, it would be much harder and most likely would be only a note in her file. It all comes down to how much stink you want to make. Personally, I would find my state rep and if he/she is a pro-2A person I would have them call the dean :)
I totally agree that the teacher should be fired but to slander her name does no good for anybody. It may make us feel better about ourselves as gun owners but it does not help our case with many of the "on the fence" citizens. She should be punished by the school, not by outraged citizens.
Well put Jake: "As responsible gun owners we must be very careful to always make our voices heard but we must do so in such a way that other people cannot use it against us." I could not have stated it any better than that.
I'd lodge a complaint with the local ACLU in what was clearly an infringement of the student's first amendment rights. I think a good case can be made regarding intimidation to silence an opinion on this event.
Lodge a complaint with the Academic Dean's office and with the state board of higher education.
***
Or do what I did...left Connecticut and moved to a somewhat saner state (Pennsylvania).
Though PA liquor laws are whacked.
The scariest part of that story is not the professor calling the police. It's the police reading off a list of firearms "registered in his name."
Sheesh.
Yet another reason I prefer Virginia.
Most anti-gun liberals are mentally unstable and know that if they carried a gun, they would use it in a fit of rage over some petty irritation.
They assume that everyone around them, including gun owners, are also mentally unstable and prone to act irresponsibly. I think headshrinkers call this phenomenon "projection".
The correct action to take, barring the victim being VERY rich, is for him to ask his District Attorney to have the Professor cited for Making a False Police Report. If the DA were to refuse to take that complaint, I would then ask the DA to convene a Grand Jury for purposes of investigating whether or not the police abused their authority in even taking the Professor's complaint. Liberal as they are, I would not hesitate to involve the local branch of CopWatch in this effort.
We have a somewhat similar case going out here in OR over a student's legal and proper concealed carry on campus (that's legal in OR, there is total pre-emption here, although the Universities try to deny it). Both the University and the police force are being sued as I write, and a prominent regional gun-rights organization is collecting money for the legal fund.
Reading Hyman Roth's comments above was quite discouraging. A CSU professor attacked me as some sort of sister-marrying, knuckle dragging redneck a while back.
I tried to have a polite conversation with this professor via email. We discussed my upcoming book on deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill--and it became apparent that she was vigorously in opposition because she was fearful of being involuntarily committed again. The more I read of what she blogged, and the more conversation we had, the more convinced I became that she had good reason to worry. She was clearly not right in the head.
..Tailor made for the " ask my lawyer " answer. If I were that student, I'd rip Ms. Paula Anderson a new earhole the next time i saw her in public. Embarrass the living hell out of her and make her cry. And I would file a complaint against her with the University alleging discrimination and unprofessional behaviour. I'd put posters up in public places near her home and the University questioning her professional honesty.