The problem at Saddleback College (throwing Margot under the bus)

     It’s been another banner day for the right-wing loutisphere—and, so, too, for the Neville Chamberlain Appreciation Society. (See Saturday's The YAF brouhaha: righties flip out, leaving slime and worse.) Clueless right wing louts have continued to post disturbing denunciations of Saddleback College administration, academia in general, and especially a certain history instructor who was recently videotaped taking down illegally posted 9-11 posters on campus.
     This has continued, not just in the predictable right-wing places—Breitbart.com, The Blaze—but on Saddleback College’s own Facebook page! Evidently, little if anything is done to curate remarks at the latter site, and so it was left to various faculty, at least here at IVC, to contact Jenny M of Public Info and complain.
     Understandably, they don’t like to delete comments (said Jenny) but they have been monitoring the Facebook remarks and deleting those judged problematic. OK?
     Huh? In fact, plenty of hateful and appalling remarks can be found on Saddleback’s page (see below) right now. Some of us have been monitoring the site for days, and there’s no indication of the alleged curation or culling. (Possibly, Jenny needs to upgrade her concept of hateful verbiage to include “bitch” and “cunt.”)

This comment can be found on Saddleback College's Facebook Page (as of 7:00 p.m. today (9/12/16))

     I called the Jennster myself, and she was quite friendly. I asked her about the hateful (and sometimes violent—see above) Facebook comments and the stunning decision, evidently made by college officials, to invite the leader of the student group (Young Americans for Freedom's Audra Leslie) to lead the pledge at today’s Saddleback College 9-11 event!
     How can this be, Neville? Nasty right wing louts working hard to generate fact-challenged blogospheric feeding frenzies and to terrorize policy-upholding faculty? That’s who gets invited to say the pledge at the big 9-11 event?
     It seemed to many of us that, with that, the college had officially thrown Margot under the bus.
     But here’s how Jenny explained the situation to me. "We need to change the subject now," she said. We need to take the focus away from Margot and return it to the 9-11 event. That's why they invited the YAF kid to lead the pledge.

Appearing on Saddleback's Facebook Page: "Audra Leslie of Young Americans for Freedom 
(YAF) lead the Pledge of Allegiance."

     That's nuts. Some of us at least at IVC were hopping mad, and we started strategizing. Among other things, we planned to attend this afternoon’s meeting of the Faculty Association (aka the union), at IVC, to make our displeasure known.
     In the meantime, as per the right wing loutisphere’s playbook, the instructor in question, now thoroughly demonized, has had her personal information promulgated, not just on Breitbart.com, but on the college Facebook page! And so the Big Ugly is on: she’s received the predictable threats and has had to take extreme steps to protect herself. Even her office mate doesn’t feel safe, and no wonder. (Have you read some of these comments? Some of 'em are bad, really bad.)
     Well, at 3:00 today, three of us from IVC’s School of Humanities (plus a Humanities Faculty Rep and Lewis Long) were present to make our case. Lewis successfully motioned to move up the “other items” portion of the agenda. Then, the union prez briefly explained the brouhaha for those still out of the loop. The instructor in question, he said, simply acted in accordance with the existing policy for postings and thus deserved none of the invective she received. Efforts to get the critics to recognize that Margot was simply acting in accordance with district policy (policy, by the way created by a restriction-happy conservative board that sought to muzzle student criticism) went nowhere. The feeding frenzy was on.
     The discussion that followed lasted at least a half hour. Here are my notes:

• Many faculty in the room were unaware of the situation, but, upon hearing the facts, they seemed to share our concerns.
• Lewis explained that, as a union, at the least we could and should press the safety issue raised by the situation.
• Some faculty seemed moved by an impulse to ban and muzzle the YAF kids. I (among others) suggested that such a move is contrary to an embrace of free speech and, beyond that, it would give these louts precisely what they want: something to crow about.
• I

  

  From Audra's Twitter page

  noted that lots of right-wing organizations have a curious but effective MO, which was illustrated by an incident occurring at IVC last Spring. A "preacher" and his crew came to campus and, quoting the Bible, proceeded to spew obnoxious remarks: women shouldn’t go to college, Mohammed was a pedophile, etc. Many students were offended and outraged that anyone would be allowed to say such things on the grounds of the college. Some of us—and, to his credit, the President of the college—came to the Bible-toters’ defense, explaining that, though we may hate what they have to say, they have a right to their opinion. (In fact, the “preacher” did receive abuse from some students.) It soon became clear that the preacher's organization tours college campuses, attempting to provoke intolerance of him: taunts, threats, spitting, banishment, etc. The trick is to video the intolerance, edit the footage for maximal cherry-pickular impact, and then release it to the hungry freaks of conservative social media. Boom!
• Plainly, that’s what these YAF kids (or their flag-pledging leader) are about. They filmed the instructor who, quite correctly, as per the district’s AR8000 (a policy created by a right-wing board that sought to minimize speech that had been critical of them), took down “never forget” posters that had been illegally posted on campus buildings. Voila! The video went viral, “proving” once again that liberals are afoot in academia, oppressing the poor defenseless right-winger who wishes only to love her country.
• Fear was expressed that, by appeasing this group, we were in fact setting a precedent and inviting these right-wing guerrillas to monitor instructors, taping or filming their remarks, editing them for maximum effect, and then promulgating them on the right-winged crazy-towns of the internet.
• It was suggested that we call for the application of our free speech policies fairly and even-handedly, whatever a group’s politics.
• Someone noted that a member of the SC faculty evidently joined the frey, condemning the instructor on their personal Facebook page.
• Those who run the college Facebook page should be encouraged to do a much better job curating hateful comments.
• The union Prez should meet with SC Prez Burnett, communicating our concerns.
• And so on.

More later.

Audra with pal and felon Dinesh D'Souza