A Nazi Salute Ignites Uproar
Professor On Leave After Meeting Protest
A Housatonic Community College professor was put on paid leave after shocking and offending faculty and administrators from the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system when he gave a Nazi salute during a recent meeting.
Several faculty members who attended the Nov. 2 meeting at Manchester Community College said Charles Meyrick, assistant professor of business and economics, become agitated and wound up holding a Nazi salute for five or 10
minutes as the meeting, led by a CSCU administrator, proceeded.
Campus police were called, the faculty members said, after which Meyrick reportedly ceased the salute.
A spokesman for the CSCU system said an investigation is underway and the professor is on leave pending the results.
“The reports of a faculty member's outburst at a meeting last week, including the use of a Nazi salute, which required campus police to respond are appalling and unacceptable,” Mark Ojakian, president of the CSCU system, said in a statement Friday.
Ojakian said a number of faculty and staff who were at the meeting “have reached out to me describing how they felt violated, unsafe and shocked by what they experienced. This matter was immediately called to my attention and will be dealt with promptly and appropriately.”
Ojakian said the action “does not fit with our community's culture and values, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard of civility, decency, and respect.”
Meyrick could not be reached for comment.
Several faculty members who attended the meeting said it was concentrated on aligning the curricula of the 12 community colleges across campuses.
Meyrick reportedly grew agitated, shouting during the discussion and eventually holding up his arm in a prolonged Nazi salute according to several faculty members who attended the meeting.
After the incident, the meeting participants had a moment of silence in memory of the victims of the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27.
Steve Ginsburg, the Connecticut regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said there's nothing illegal about the use of the Nazi salute, but “colleges can have valid codes of conduct for behavior for students and professors and I'm presuming that Housatonic has something like that and they have standards of behavior.
“Frankly, when you think someone is being too authoritarian there are more effective ways of communicating that point,” he said, “than using a ‘Heil Hitler' or Nazi salute, which as we see can be deeply offensive and trivializes the horrors of the Holocaust.”
Ginsburg said he doesn't auto- matically assume that someone is anti-Semitic if they use a Nazi salute.
Since the election of President Donald Trump, there have been many instances when Nazi imagery and white supremacist imagery have surfaced in connection with violent events.
Several faculty members said Meyrick's agitation and anger are related to the controversy over the plans of Ojakian and the Board of Regents for Higher Education to eventually consolidate all 12 community colleges into a single statewide college.
Earlier this year, the accrediting body for the CSCU system rejected a plan for the merger, criticizing the timeline and other aspects as unrealistic. Since then, CSCU leaders have been working to streamline administrative functions and align curriculum, with hopes of getting the approval to consolidate into one college in 2023.
“The faculty are split as to how this consolidation is viewed,” said Del Cummings, whowas at the Nov. 2 meeting and is a professor at Naugatuck Community College and vice-chairman of the faculty advisory committee to the board of regents. “Many are absolutely in favor of it and many are absolutely not in favor of it. To date, the more vocal group have been the ones who are not in favor.”
Cummings said he's been working to try to “defuse the situation. … Right now I'm trying to patch up the relationship between the faculty and the board of regents, which hasn't been the best.”
Judy Wallace, a Middlesex Community College faculty member, said she found the Nazi gesture “offensive.” “I was shocked that that occurred anywhere and most especially at a meeting,” she said.
Wallace said she believes that Ojakian has been proceeding “responsibly and asking people for their opinions.”
“He's putting people in places that are skilled at what they do,” she said. “I've been at many meetings and they keep asking for input. … Information is flowing in both directions.”