Over 100 Missouri state legislators have signed a pair of letters calling on the University of Missouri to fire Melissa A. Click, the taxpayer-funded assistant professor of mass media who was caught on camera in November threatening a photojournalism student with mob violence and attempted to deprive him of his First Amendment rights.
In a letter dated Jan. 4, the lawmakers implored the University of Missouri Board of Curators and its interim chancellor to sack Click for her “unacceptable and inflammatory” behavior on campus.
In total, more than 100 members of the Missouri state House and 18 members of the state Senate signed the letters, reports The Maneater, Mizzou’s student newspaper.
All the signatories are Republican. No Missouri Democrats took a stand for free speech.
On Nov. 9, Click — along with her partner in media suppression, MU official Janna Basler — accosted student journalists Tim Tai and Mark Shierbecker as the pair covered a campus protest following the resignation of MU system president Tim Wolfe.
Click and other protesters pushed Tai backward and told him not to take photos.
Schierbecker recorded the mass media professor’s anti-media aggression and uploaded the video to YouTube. It quickly went viral.
“You need to get out,” Click told Shierbecker in the video. (You can watch it below.)
“No, I don’t,” Shierbecker said, prompting Click to grab his camera and shake it.
“Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here?” Click shouted to the crowd. “I need some muscle over here.” (RELATED: Mizzou Professor Calls For ‘Muscle’ To Help Remove Reporter Covering Protests)
The lawmakers’ letters characterize Click’s behavior as criminal and grossly unprofessional.
“As an academic professional, her first goal should have been to promote a safe and stable learning environment for all students, and to represent the university to the public in a way that strengthens the image of our flagship state institution of higher education,” one of the two letters from state lawmakers said.
“It’s imperative that the university act swiftly to remove her from her position.” Rep. Caleb Jones said in a press release obtained by the Columbia Daily Tribune.
“Every, every elected official I have talked to about this agrees we have a big issue with an MU journalism professor violating the First Amendment and assaulting students,” Jones told the local newspaper.
Click’s actions are still under review by slow-moving Columbia police, the Tribune notes. The possibility of criminal charges remain.
Prior to her assault and suppression of free speech, the taxpayer-funded Click was an obscure publicity seeker. (RELATED: Meet The Sick Mizzou Media Professor Who Threatened A Reporter With MOB VIOLENCE)
Just days before she accosted Shierbecker, Click posted an appeal on her Facebook page urging reporters to cover the then-budding protest.
“Hey folks, students fighting racism on the MU campus want to get their message into the national media,” the media professor wrote. “Who among my friends knows someone who would want a scoop on this incredible topic?”
That Facebook post strangely disappeared after Click’s assault became internationally notorious.
Click also switched her Twitter account to private to prevent public consumption of her tweets.
And she lost her ceremonial faculty post in Mizzou’s more-prestigious school of journalism.
Click’s biography at the University of Missouri’s website indicates that she has a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “Her research interests center on popular culture texts and audiences, particularly texts and audiences disdained in mainstream culture,” the bio explains. (RELATED: The 9 Most Preposterous Parts Of Melissa Click’s Absurd Résumé)
Her current research includes studying readers of the tour de smut “50 [sic] Shades of Grey.” She also studies Lady Gaga, “class and food in reality television programming” and “messages about work in children’s television programs.”
The last time she was published in an academic publication was in 2013. The topic was Lady Gaga.
The letter from the 18 Missouri state senators also seeks the sacking of Basler, who is an associate director in Mizzou’s student life department. Basler argued vociferously with Tai as he tried to cover the on-the-taxpayer-funded-campus protest.
Here are Click and Basler bullying student reporters who attempted to report on events occurring on Mizzou’s taxpayer-funded campus.
WATCH:
The underlying protests at Mizzou centered on Jonathan Butler, a twentysomething graduate student who led the ultimately successful calls for Wolfe to resign by going on a six-day hunger strike.
Butler’s strike was also over a swastika made out of poop which appeared in a dorm bathroom and an allegation from a black student that someone in a pickup truck had uttered a racial slur at him at some off-campus location. Delusional students eventually became so dizzy with racism that they saw imaginary people wearing Ku Klux Klan hoods. (RELATED: The Biggest, Dumbest Race Hoaxes And Fake Hate Crimes On Campus In 2015)
In the summer before his fleeting hunger strike, Butler, the son of a millionaire railroad executive, had attempted to lead a failed protest about the termination of subsidized health insurance for graduate students.
Butler’s hunger strike gained strong political traction after 32 black football players publicly vowed to boycott a then-upcoming game against Brigham Young. There was no boycott. One practice was cancelled. The team played its best football of an otherwise forgettable season in the BYU game. (RELATED: University Of Missouri Football Players BOYCOTT FOOTBALL Over Black Activist’s Hunger Strike)
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