College Professor Arrested for Profane Rant at Pro-Life Students

specklebang said:

I'm not defending the lack of class exhibited here but I'm curious about the extent of the first amendment coverage.

For example, if I say **** you to somebody, that might be considered "fighting words" and could result in a disorderly conduct charge. But if I say **** Obama, hell, I'll make a bunch of new friends. So, where is the line I wonder...

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Depends on where you live. Where I live it works like this:

It is illegal to curse on the telephone. Piss someone off and they will swear a warrant otherwise, no problem;

Curse at someone in a heated way and you could be charged with assault if the police hear it or the person swears a warrant, otherwise no problem.

Curse at the police and you are going to be charged with swearing in public, disorderly conduct or something more--virtually guaranteed.

Curse at a judge and you are in contempt of court.

The long and short of it is, don't piss people off and you never have to worry about it even if you are using profanity in my hood. Otherwise, there is no real line.


BTW I get to say profanity in court if I am quoting someone or soliciting info like "When you stated they said FU B, just so there is no confusion, is it true they said **** You ***** or did they literally say 'FU B'?" It still freaks me out to use the "N" Word but sometimes it becomes unavoidable.

Fisher said:

Depends on where you live. Where I live it works like this:

It is illegal to curse on the telephone. Piss someone off and they will swear a warrant otherwise, no problem;

Curse at someone in a heated way and you could be charged with assault if the police hear it or the person swears a warrant, otherwise no problem.

Curse at the police and you are going to be charged with swearing in public, disorderly conduct or something more--virtually guaranteed.

Curse at a judge and you are in contempt of court.

The long and short of it is, don't piss people off and you never have to worry about it even if you are using profanity in my hood. Otherwise, there is no real line.

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Of that list, the only one I really understand is cursing in a court of law. You can't swear on the telephone? I do that all the time, whenever I have to talk with customer service.

Where do you live? DPRK?

Fisher said:

Depends on where you live. Where I live it works like this:

It is illegal to curse on the telephone. Piss someone off and they will swear a warrant otherwise, no problem;

Curse at someone in a heated way and you could be charged with assault if the police hear it or the person swears a warrant, otherwise no problem.

Curse at the police and you are going to be charged with swearing in public, disorderly conduct or something more--virtually guaranteed.

Curse at a judge and you are in contempt of court.

The long and short of it is, don't piss people off and you never have to worry about it even if you are using profanity in my hood. Otherwise, there is no real line.

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Ikari said:

Of that list, the only one I really understand is cursing in a court of law. You can't swear on the telephone? I do that all the time, whenever I have to talk with customer service.

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I cuss all the time, trust me. To me that is one of those weak weak laws they only use if they have absolutely nothing else unless someone swears out a warrant. There are groups of people who have to have drama in their lives and are always fighting and feuding and they will swear out those warrants in response to someone swearing out a warrant against them. They are really just huge wastes of time and money IMO. I refer to them as Spite Statutes.

Fisher said:

I cuss all the time, trust me. To me that is one of those weak weak laws they only use if they have absolutely nothing else unless someone swears out a warrant. There are groups of people who have to have drama in their lives and are always fighting and feuding and they will swear out those warrants in response to someone swearing out a warrant against them. They are really just huge wastes of time and money IMO. I refer to them as Spite Statutes.

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Yeah, once you let the whiners have their way, everyone is going to whine. I want to adopt a more "bootstrap" policy. You can't cry to government every time something doesn't go your way. Well, I mean, you actually can; but it's not going to drive us anywhere better for the most part. I don't get it. What's the point of having someone else do it for you?

Personally, I think it's unethical and very unprofessional for a teacher to curse out a student or mock them.

However, I have no problem with teachers correcting students or calling them out. Students need to have a spine. I have a teacher who rounds at a very top notch hospital that if/when you go on 4th year rotations he will drill you on drugs. He's not mean or harsh, but he will drill you and ask you "why" or "how does that work" repeatedly until you can no longer answer, he then tells you to look it up. Many of the teachers have extremely high standards and many students complain, but I think the teachers are right to have high standards and the complainers are wrong and usually lazy. I have other teachers that do similar things and aren't afraid to say "if you did that you would kill your patient." We had a humbling lecture about pharmacist related malpractice and deaths and when we make bad mistakes we are always called out on it, but I think that's an important part of learning and understanding professional responsibility.

I am thinking of going into teaching, I would drill my students and have very very high standards. I would be that strict teacher that expects my students to work hard, I expect my A students to rightfully earn their A. However, I wouldn't be abuse and would conduct my classes with professionalism and kindness. I would want my students to learn and learn the material as an expert, but I also want to be approachable and ensure that I can help them learn.

Ikari said:

Unless they are actually threatening, then it's not assault. If they're saying "I'm going to ****ing kill you and rape your corpse" OK. But if they're saying "you ignorant little ****, you have no clue what you're ****ing talking about, just spewing **** all over the place without one god damned ounce of ****ing thought, you dumb ass, retarded twat!" then no.

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And some wonder why our country has gone to hell. Go figure...

Ikari said:

So your school had no drop dates? No way to raise concern with the administration? Nowhere to file complaints?

And I am going to say deal with it because you need to learn to deal with it. My PI when I was a post-doc would rant and rave for days if anyone messed up or thought about messing up or looked at messing up the wrong way. Days. And you're in the lab 12 hrs/day at least. Hell I spent near a day in the machine shop making some pieces for our vacuum chamber and she changed her mind halfway through, such that what I made wouldn't work. When she saw it, it was a week of bitching, yelling, confrontation. I didn't go running off crying to someone about it. Deal with it, rise to the challenge and overcome. Running to government....that's the coward's way.

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The add/drop was week one. After week one, there were no refunds, and you can't switch into another class.

I never claimed to go run to the government. Hell, I didn't even run to my schools administration. I handled it the best way I could, which was asking him questions that he would stumble over and twist himself up and look like an idiot. I've dealt with unpleasant people before in my life, that isn't the problem. The problem was this guy was a moron, it was a waste of a class, and $700 I'll never get back. If you want to know why college debt is so goddamn much, its because useless teachers not only have jobs, but are required for graduation even if its not my field of study.

specklebang said:

We're discussing legality, not acceptability. Being a shmuck is never acceptable but is it illegal?

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I wouldn't get arrested for it, but I probably could get security to escort me out.

ReformCollege said:

The add/drop was week one. After week one, there were no refunds, and you can't switch into another class.

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Well **** dude, you agreed to the contract. You can still drop and retake the course with a different prof. You can still lodge official complaint. There are things you could have done. Don't try to blame anyone but yourself; your decisions were your own.

ReformCollege said:

I never claimed to go run to the government. Hell, I didn't even run to my schools administration. I handled it the best way I could, which was asking him questions that he would stumble over and twist himself up and look like an idiot. I've dealt with unpleasant people before in my life, that isn't the problem. The problem was this guy was a moron, it was a waste of a class, and $700 I'll never get back. If you want to know why college debt is so goddamn much, its because useless teachers not only have jobs, but are required for graduation even if its not my field of study.

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There are some issues with the way we run higher ed for sure; that doesn't mean that this wasn't anyone else's fault but your own. I'm sorry dude, but I've been through the entirety of academia ending in a PhD in physics. Your **** ain't unique and it ain't troublesome. There is no guarantee in life that things will go great and exactly as theory predicts. Everyone has to deal with crap like this, and those amongst us who can succeed pull themselves up and do so. I'm sorry you had a douche professor, but I will guarantee you this; he ain't the last douche you're gonna have to deal with. So settle in for the long haul, cause many people are jackasses. You're going to NEED to learn how to deal with them.

Risky Thicket said:

RC, you are an adult. You are going to college. One of the purposes of college is to challenge you, challenge your beliefs, teach you to think independently and formulate your responses based on what you believe to be correct. If you are getting a spoon fed education, if your beliefs are not seriously challenged, if your classes at times don't involve heated discussions, if you aren't motivated toward vehement disagreement with some of your professors from time to time, you aren't getting your money's worth.

If the adjunct in the OP is causing her students to think, if she is challenging their beliefs, if her rant lights a fire in their bellies, then she is doing a hell of a good job. She doesn't have to be right or wrong. That hardly matters. Having the government step in is a horrible and tragic lesson, especially for the little Nazi who called the cops.

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Yes RT, that is the ideal of how college is supposed to work. The professor challenges me to think, I think, reformulate my argument, and challenge him/her right back and inevitably be both are better off for it. I don't have a problem with merely disagreeing with a professor. What that situation was in my class was basically he was spoon feeding me an education, yet was horrendously bad at backing up anything he had to say and would shout me or any other student down if we pointed out any flaws in his argument. He wasn't challenging my beliefs because there was no exchange of ideas there. I can't be challenged by someone who doesn't know how to back up what they have to say.

I like the prolife students retort to the whole incident: We're just such perfect little citizens and exemplary students............Talk about "sheeple".............................

ReformCollege said:

Yes RT, that is the ideal of how college is supposed to work. The professor challenges me to think, I think, reformulate my argument, and challenge him/her right back and inevitably be both are better off for it. I don't have a problem with merely disagreeing with a professor. What that situation was in my class was basically he was spoon feeding me an education, yet was horrendously bad at backing up anything he had to say and would shout me or any other student down if we pointed out any flaws in his argument. He wasn't challenging my beliefs because there was no exchange of ideas there. I can't be challenged by someone who doesn't know how to back up what they have to say.

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One of the best classes I had as an undergrad was from a marketing professor who was a strong advocate for a form of socialism! His reasoning was at one level plausible, but his reasoning was crap. We would argue with the guy. He was an arrogant asshole AND he was wrong. We spent hours disproving some of his assertions just to get back at the prick. I once walked out of class. Near the last part of the semester it dawned on us what he was doing. He was brilliant. We bought into it early on. I learned so damn much in that class. It was a great experience. I never cut his classes because I wanted to be there and dare him to prove me wrong. Great professor...and he was still a prick.

Can't watch the video.

Legality aside, professionally, she's a bit of a twit. Present yourself better than that if you're going to be representing the university and are in charge of a class, please.

As long as the Westboro Baptist Church is allowed to scream at funerals and call dead American soldiers fags then I don't think the professor should have been arrested.

Crosscheck said:

As long as the Westboro Baptist Church is allowed to scream at funerals and call dead American soldiers fags then I don't think the professor should have been arrested.

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I'll agree. I'll also say that WBC should be allowed to scream at funerals, no matter how stupid they are.

The cops were just keeping the peace. No sense in letting her carry on endlessly. Had they not told her to stop the situation likely would have escalated.

One of the advantages to living in civil society is that we can expect people to behave in a relatively civil manner in public.

American said:

Can't watch the video.

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Click here: http://www.debatepolitics.com/break...-rant-pro-life-students-4.html#post1061704525

American said:

Can't watch the video.

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Here's the script, more or less:

**** you, you ****ing ****ers. What makes you think I can't say the **** word, you ****s? Profane? You think I'm profane, how about that ****ing exhibit from those ****ing ****ers, the ****s? Where does it ****ing saying in the ****ing first amendment that I can't say ****? ****ing hell, you ****ers.

Taylor said:

The cops were just keeping the peace. No sense in letting her carry on endlessly. Had they not told her to stop the situation likely would have escalated.

One of the advantages to living in civil society is that we can expect people to behave in a relatively civil manner in public.

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How was she being uncivil?

Awesome! What a foul mouth. She deserved to be arrested. She continued cursing after they asked her not to. I only wish she would have resisted arrest or punched one of the LEO's in the face. Would have loved to see her slammed face first into the concrete with a knee in her back while being cuffed. Now that would have been truely awesome.

Fiddytree said:

Legality aside, professionally, she's a bit of a twit. Present yourself better than that if you're going to be representing the university and are in charge of a class, please.

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I agree. Not really representative of the Academy.

Curry made a point of saying for the cameras to tell her class that she was being arrested, so there's that. Maybe her time might have been better spent preparing for that class instead of standing around acting like a jerk.

I mean, I watched the vid. She's just having her little tantrum, and so what? From what I've read, she was arrested for disorderly conduct, that apparently being defined as repeatedly dropping the f-bomb. Don't know state/local/university rules, but I am guessing that the cops wouldn't have arrested her if she hadn't violated the law.

Whether that law is "smart" or "good" isn't necessarily relevant to her arrest. Did she break the law? Will Curry become a folk-heroine? Who knows. All that matters is whether she broke the law. If she did, tough noogies.

Ikari said:

That's because they can "construe" anything as that; not because it actually is.

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And if according to the officer's judgment you are guilty you will be allowed to present your case in court.

Let's all stay tuned.