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Valdosta State University president Ronald Zaccari gets the award for the lamest excuse for student expulsion. Ever. Witness the case of T. Hayden Barnes, anti-parking lot crusader:
In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald
Zaccari, the university’s president, wrote that he “present[ed] a clear
and present danger to this campus” and referred to the “attached
threatening document,” a printout of an image from an album on Barnes’s
Facebook profile. The collage featured a picture of a parking garage, a
photo of Zaccari, a bulldozer, the words “No Blood for Oil” and the
title “S.A.V.E.-Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage,” a reference to a
campus environmental group and Barnes’s contention that the president
sought to make the structures part of his legacy at the university.
Bonus points for the classy move of slipping the letter under the door. You wouldn't want to waste all the time it took to slip the note into the Campus Mail outbox, now would you? Better to send an assistant with nothing better to do across campus to hand deliver it... under the crack in the door.
What other maniacal plot landed sophomore Barnes on the fast track out of VSU?
As additional evidence of the threat posed by Barnes, the document
referred to a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying
graphic read: “Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is
searching for the next big thing. Are you it?” It doesn’t mention that Project Spotlight
was an online digital video contest and that “shoot” in that context
meant “record.” The appeal also mentions that Barnes’s profile stated,
at one point, that he was “cleaning out and rearranging his room and
thus, his mind, or so he hopes.” That was likely a status update,
commonly used by Facebook members to update their friends on what
they’re doing at a particular moment — whether literally or
metaphorically.
If that got you snickering, what followed should lead to a surefire guffaw:
After Zaccari saw a printout of Barnes’s Facebook page, he was
subsequently “accompanied to high-profile events by plain-clothed
police officers, and uniformed police officers were placed on high
alert,” according to the document. The president has since announced
his retirement, six months earlier than expected.
College administrators do all sorts of wacky things - whether consciously or inadvertantly - that limit the free speech rights of college students. This complete and utter over-reaction, however, takes the prize.
Tags:
Valdosta State University |
free speech |
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