Rieder: Missouri professor: Don’t judge me over one mistake,
On Nov. 9, Melissa Click’s life changed irrevocably.
Click became an instant national celebrity, and not in a good way, when video of her calling for “some muscle” to remove a journalist trying to cover student protests at the University of Missouri went viral.
The communications professor, who had a courtesy appointment at Missouri’s J-school at the time, became a vivid symbol of hostility toward the First Amendment.
Since then, Click has been suspended from teaching pending an investigation by the University of Missouri System Board of Curators.
She has been hit with criminal charges; she was charged with third-degree assault, a misdemeanor, although she can avoid prosecution if she performs community service and stays out of trouble for a year. More than 100 Missouri lawmakers have demanded she be fired. And she has been the target of numerous threats and insults.
After three months of silence, Click has launched a public relations offensive, orchestrated by the Texas public relations firm Status Labs.
She has granted a number of interviews, including this one to USA TODAY.
Click acknowledges that her behavior that day was out of line. “The words that came out of my mouth came out of the dark crevices of my brain,” she says. “I didn’t mean to be the cause of violence.”
But she urges people to judge her by her body of work, by her 12 years teaching at Missouri, not by a single ugly episode.
A letter signed by more than 100 faculty members expresses support for the embattled professor.
“I can’t defend the way I handled that encounter,” she says. “I’m embarrassed by it. I was very flustered. But it was one moment in 12 years at Missouri. It was one moment in a full day in an historic moment at our campus,” when the president and chancellor both resigned in the face of protests about the way black students were treated at Missouri.
“I hope my critics will be willing to place my actions in context and not judge me just on one action,” she says. “I don’t think one mistake should be the end of a career.”
But Click’s case is complicated by the surfacing of another video that shows her cursing at a police officer during an earlier student protest when the officer touched her. Click had interposed herself between students and police who were trying to move them to the sidewalk during the university’s Homecoming Parade on Oct. 10.
The new video, first published by Columbia’s Missourian, angered interim Chancellor Hank Foley, who said he would discuss it with the Board of Curators as it investigates Click’s behavior.
“Her conduct and behavior are appalling, and I am not only disappointed, I am angry, that a member of our faculty acted this way,” Foley said Sunday in a statement. “Her actions caught on camera last October, are just another example of a pattern of misconduct by Dr. Click — most notably, her assault on one of our students while seeking ‘muscle’ during a highly volatile situation on Carnahan Quadrangle in November.”
Click, who says she was on the scene to view the parade, defends her actions that day.
“I’m sorry for the language I used, but I’m also sorry I felt I needed to put myself between the students and the officers to keep the students safe.”
She adds, “I took a stand because the crowd was hostile (to the student protesters). The po- lice reaction was out of line. My reaction to being pushed was not uncommon.”
She says the incident “shows my purpose was to protect the students.”
As for the Nov. 9 events, Click says that after the two officials resigned the student protesters wanted to take time out to prepare for a press conference later in the day.
Other students formed a circle around them to keep the media away. The protesters “weren’t anti-media; they needed a little bit of quiet.”
Her fateful confrontation with student photographer Mark Schierbecker came after protesters and their supporters blocked Tim Tai, a Missouri student trying to photograph the scene for ESPN.
“Someone put a camera in my face and didn’t identify himself,” Click says.
She says racial tensions were high at the time, and the night before a truck sporting a Confederate battle flag materialized, an apparent attempt to intimidate the protesters.
“I responded quickly, without a lot of thought,” Click says. “I didn’t represent myself well. I made mistakes.”
As for calling for “muscle,” she says, “I’m 5-foot-1, not very tall. I was calling for someone better equipped. I didn’t know how to handle the situation I was in.”
That may well be true, but Click’s behavior on the video goes well beyond the “muscle” remark. She is very aggressive and strident, and outright mocking of the notion that the First Amendment should come into play.
Click says she’s still trying to figure out “why my moment became the sound bite for what happened that day.”
One possibility: “People were mad about what happened that day. My mistakes made me an easy target for expressing that anger.”
As for her decision to go public, she says, “It was hard to stay silent while everyone debated my actions.” Status Labs President Darius Maxwell Fisher says his firm, which specializes in crisis management and online reputations, got involved because it believes Click “has been unfairly cast by public figures and the media to date. Melissa has supported the right side of a cause (equal treatment of minorities on campus), but she unfortunately let her emotions get in the way of better judgment during a protest.”
Looking ahead, Click says she’s eager to get back into the classroom and remains “hopeful” that that will happen.
“Her conduct and behavior are appalling, and I am not only disappointed, I am angry, that a member of our faculty acted this way.” Interim Chancellor Hank Foley, University of Missouri