Media fearmongering-the aftermath

[AFPheonix]

But the difference between your scenario and what happened in the OP was that the presentation in the OP was actually topical.

If the prof wanted veto power over projects, then he should have had the students submit their plans for their projects ahead of time. Anytime I had a large presentation in college that was SOP.
Since he didn't, the teacher was pretty much obliged to either deal with it or at least offer some debate time for all the students. What he did was wrong.
And seriously, low level Mass Comm classes are gonna have kids that are going to try to be edgy. That's what people that age do. This could have been a great teaching moment and opportunity for the students to work on their reasoning abilities, and the teacher screwed it up.

[Evandril]

Oh, agreed...My response was more to the blanket 'Freedom of speech' comment, than the teacher's actions. I should have made my dislike of the teacher's actions in this case more clear, my apologies. I do agree, the teacher could have used debate to find out more about the student's views on the topic, and THEN if there was still worry, let someone know...at a worst case senario, that is.

[Shangri-laschild]

I'm coming at this subject from the prespective of someone who works as a college police dispatcher.

If a professor is worried by a student, they need to tell us. It takes so much work to grill this into a teachers head and still, they don't always. From there, we get the details and decide if the student is a threat and if they need to be talked to, if it's something we should only worry about if it becomes a repeat thing, or if there is no threat. I don't know if that department over reacted. I know it would take a lot for us to get that much information. If the student just stated facts and said nothing frighting, then at most, we would just sit them down and give them a heads up. Just "by the way, when you say stuff like that, it worries people sometimes."

I can't think of a situation where we'd be getting a list of owned guns right off the bat and grilling the student, so in that respect, I'm thinking that the police might have gone a bit overboard on that one. I also know what kind of pressure it's like when something does happen though. We've had a bomb scare before and you're trying to do your job while half the people are pissed because they didn't like us evacuating classes and the other half wondered why we hadn't done it sooner and why the hell didn't we already have someone in cuffs. Not saying it makes freaking out and overreacting ok, but it's a bit of a tight line when you've got someone who seems a bit off.

The teacher definitely didn't do anything wrong though. And yes, a teacher can say "I don't want this topic spoken about in my class." Like another poster said, the trouble is when they only ban one half of it. I've had plenty of teachers decide that certain topics were just too emotional for people and they didn't want to deal with them. They have that right.

Much though I am for guns (with sufficient gun control), I agree that the pro gun side does just as much fearmongering as the anit gun side does.

[Greenday]

The teacher definitely didn't do anything wrong though. And yes, a teacher can say "I don't want this topic spoken about in my class." Like another poster said, the trouble is when they only ban one half of it. I've had plenty of teachers decide that certain topics were just too emotional for people and they didn't want to deal with them. They have that right.

The main problem, in my opinion, is that if there are topics that the teacher might think would be upsetting or something like that, they should have either given out restrictions when giving the topic or should have pre-approved the topics. The majority of the fault of it going that far was the teacher's fault.

[Shangri-laschild]

The main problem, in my opinion, is that if there are topics that the teacher might think would be upsetting or something like that, they should have either given out restrictions when giving the topic or should have pre-approved the topics. The majority of the fault of it going that far was the teacher's fault.

But the problem with that is, it might not have been the subject itself that the teacher found creepy. It could have been entirely how the student presented it that the teacher found creepy. In that case, it wouldn't be the teachers fault.

[AdminAssistant]

But the problem with that is, it might not have been the subject itself that the teacher found creepy. It could have been entirely how the student presented it that the teacher found creepy. In that case, it wouldn't be the teachers fault.

Exactly! And yes, it is POUNDED into our heads - signs to look for, being aware of any strange behavior.