Melissa Click: Missouri professor seen cursing at police officer in new video
The academic was suspended last year after a confrontation with student journalists
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Your support makes all the difference.Officials at the University of Missouri says a new video shows “appalling” behaviour from an academic who was suspended for clashes with student journalists during protests last year.
The Columbia Police Department released video from an October protest on the campus in which Melissa Click appears to be cursing at a police officer who is trying to clear a roadway. Ms Click and a group of student-demonstrators had locked arms and blocked a road during the university's homecoming parade in October.
In the footage, which was first published by the Columbia Missourian, the teacher appears to be showing profanities at an officer who placed an arm on her as he told her to get back on the pavement.
Less than two weeks later, the assistant communication professor was captured on video during a separate incident, when she called for “some muscle” to help her eject a student-journalist at protest site on the university's quad.
The demonstrations were among several that African-American students on campus organised last fall to express their anger over the university administrators' response to a series of racially-charged incidents on campus, the Associated Press said.
In the video, Ms Click tells police to “get your hands off the children” and curses at an officer who grabbed her shoulder.
“I remember thinking, stupidly, that if as a white person I put myself in front of the students, that maybe they wouldn’t push me,” Ms Click told the newspaper.
The University of Missouri’s protests were spurred by what activists said was administrators’ indifference to racial issues. The protests escalated in November, when video showed Ms Click calling for help to remove a student videographer from a protest at the university. The Columbia chancellor later resigned.
Ms Click, who was suspended last month, was charged with assault, though a prosecutor has indicated he will drop the charge if the academic completes community service.
Interim Chancellor Hank Foley said on Sunday night in a statement that the footage showed a “pattern of misconduct.”
“Her conduct and behavior are appalling, and I am not only disappointed, I am angry, that a member of our faculty acted this way,” he said.
“We must have high expectations of members of our community, and I will address these new revelations with the Board of Curators as they work to complete their own review of the matter.”
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