Report: UNC lecturer's e-mail harassment

Report: UNC lecturer's e-mail harassment

BY ERIC FERRERI : The Herald-Sun
eferreri@heraldsun.com
Sep 22, 2004 : 10:13 pm ET

"The U.S. Department of Education says a UNC lecturer's mass e-mail criticizing a conservative student constituted discrimination and harassment, but that the university handled the ensuing controversy properly.

The February incident touched off a storm of discussion and controversy on the Carolina campus. Conservative students and university observers thought it indicative of liberal bias in the classroom; liberal students and others thought the lecturer, Elyse Crystall, was unfairly victimized for trying to protect her class from threatening speech.

In an English class called "Literature and Cultural Diversity," the student, Tim Mertes, mentioned his discomfort with homosexuality and spoke of a friend who was, in the friend's word, "disgusted" by a homosexual man's advances toward him.

Crystall, the lecturer, called out Mertes for his comments, criticizing him in an e-mail distributed to about 30 members of the class. In the e-mail, Crystall termed Mertes' comments "hate speech" and said they were an example of white male privilege."

And then this:

"This thorough, five-month investigation by federal authorities details the unchecked power of university professors," Jones said. "UNC absolutely must review their policies as to why a teacher like Ms. Crystall was allowed to remain and teach at UNC for months after such an egregious violation of a student's right to speak."

But Judith Wegner, chairwoman of UNC's faculty, cautioned against reading too much into the Office of Civil Rights report on this one issue.

"Anyone trying to say the sky is falling, based on what OCR said, isn't giving the facts their due," said Wegner, a law professor and former dean of UNC's School of Law. "The facts are pretty straight forward. The teacher made a mistake, and the university did what it had to do."

Sure Judith, UNC did everything it could! Oh wait, the UNC did nothing until forced to.

--WP