BY AARON BARLOW
Orange Coast College professor Olga Perez Stable Cox has taken a powder.
For good reason.
And all of us, whether we agree with her politically or not, whether we applaud her classroom actions or condemn them, should be appalled and frightened.
No ifs, ands or buts… this is insane:
The professor, the union that represents her and the college have received more than 1,000 emails, calls and Facebook comments – most of them critical of Cox, who a week after the election was recorded on video telling students in her human sexuality class that “we’re really back to being (in) a civil war.”
“Someone emailed her a picture of her house, with her address,” said Rob Schneiderman, president of the Coast Federation of Educators/American Federation of Teachers Local 1911. The email called Cox a “libtard, Marxist, hatemonger, nutcase” and said “her home address is now going to be sent everywhere,” he added.
Others threatened her livelihood, some her life.
“You want communism, go to Cuba … try to bring it to America and we’ll put a (expletive) bullet in your face,” read an email to her.
Each of us needs to be speaking out against this sort of behavior and in protection of Cox. It’s as simple as that.
If we do not, more of this will happen.
It’s as simple, again, as that.
Hear, hear.
This story elides key information that is necessary to assess the event. Why?
The professor’s comments about Trump are manifestly unbalanced (Trump as Hitler), but as such nonsense is typical in left-wing circles (and colleges are left wing), I don’t expect readers to agree with me.
But we have a professor who used her privileged position to humiliate students who supported Trump, having begun a political discussion that was wholly inappropriate given the coursework (as well as coming from someone who is academically unqualified regarding the subject matter). When she was caught on video, the outrageousness of her behavior produced the expected result.
What does she and the college do? Suspend the student! I guess whistle blowing and speaking truth to power are only valued when the persons being scrutinized are Republicans.
The professor meantime plays the victim, even though she is the one with the power and the one who clearly misused her power. Is she really “fearful”? Well, she may be, but then she is also, personally, terribly fearful of Trump (from her privileged $160,000-a-year position). Her comments strike me as psycho, but I don’t care if she’s genuinely psycho or just coldly manipulating events. What I care about is the mental state and future of the victimized students, particularly the one who has been suspended. These students didn’t publish addresses or the like (so far as has been reported).
There is no nice way of putting this case. Inevitably the professor will look bad, as will the college–because they have acted badly. The story did not grapple seriously with such issues. It should have.