At Milo Yiannopoulos Protest, Prof's Hassling of Journalists Backfires After She Calls Cops
Melissa Click (the sequel) at American University.
An American University faculty member attempted to make life difficult for journalists covering a campus protest last night, but her plan went awry after she called the police.
The Washington Examiner's Ashe Schow was at AU last night reporting on Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopolous' visit to campus. (Schow tells me she was there on behalf of a forthcoming documentary, Thought Police, and was not representing The Examiner.) Yiannopoulos is a deliberately controversial figure, and his presence on campus prompted a student protest.
A female faculty member—now dubbed Melissa Click 2.0–tried to interfere, telling Schow and her camera crew that they were required to accompany her inside. They had to follow "certain regulations that the university is guided by" because AU is providing "a safe space for everybody who works or studies on this campus," she claimed.
After the faculty member realized Schow's group was recording her, she became hostile. "Are you kidding me?" she asked. "Seriously, I'm calling the police."
The police didn't immediately respond to her call. Later, when the cops did appear, the faculty member expected them to escort the journalists off campus. Instead, they wanted to have a chat with the faculty member, according to Breitbart News.
"The police came over and she thought they were going to save her but actually they escorted HER away," Schow wrote on Twitter.
University professors and administrators making life difficult for students and journalists is nothing new, though one might have expected the widespread public condemnation of Click—as well as her termination and arrest—to deter imitators.
