Posted on 02/21/2017 4:19:07 AM PST by Kaslin
After the election of Donald Trump as president, a professor at Orange Coast College in California, Olga Perez Stable Cox, went into an extended hate-rant against the president-elect. Among other things, she described the Trump election as an “act of terrorism,” labelled him a “white supremacist” and called Vice-President-Elect Mike Pence “one of the most anti-gay humans in this country.”
And this wasn’t even a political science class in which one might expect political talk, no matter how irresponsible. Stable Cox is a professor of human sexuality.
When a student who recorded the diatribe posted the recording on social media, the professor’s union, the Coast Federation of Educators, AFT local chapter 1911, posted this message on Facebook:
“This is an illegal recording without the permission of the instructor. The student will be identified and may be facing legal action.”
According to the union, the recording, “violate[s] the professor's course syllabus, the Coast Community College District Code of Student Conduct, and the California Educational Code, section 78907, which exist to provide a robust, learning environment for all students irrespective of their opinions.”
The aforementioned California Educational Code states:
“The use by any person, including a student, of any electronic listening or recording device in any classroom without the prior consent of the instructor is prohibited. . . .”
The American Association of University Professors has long opposed unauthorized recording and public posting of what professors say in classrooms.
As it happens, I was a college teacher for two years at Brooklyn College. I recall students asking me if they could record my lectures. And I remember thinking, “Why on earth would I say no?”
I wanted whatever I said in a classroom to be heard by more than 50 people. “Who wouldn’t?” I wondered.
Here, then, is my theory as to why most professors who object to their class lectures being recorded do so:
They fear having what they say exposed to the general public.
Our colleges, universities, (and an increasing number of high schools and elementary schools) have been transformed from educational institutions into indoctrination institutions. With the left-wing takeover of universities, their primary aim has become graduating as many leftists as possible.
The vast majority of our colleges have become left-wing seminaries. Just as Christian seminaries exist to produce committed Christians, Western universities exist to produce committed leftists. Aside from the Christian-Leftism difference, universities differ in only one respect from Christian seminaries. Christian seminaries admit their goal, whereas the universities deceive the public about theirs.
Thus, in the “social sciences” – disciplines outside the natural sciences and math – a large number of college teachers inject their politics into their classrooms. And if they are recorded, the general public will become aware of just how politicized their classroom lectures are.
But there is another reason.
Most professors objecting to being recorded know on some level that they are persuasive only when their audience is composed largely of very young people just out of high school. They know that if their ideas are exposed to adults, they may be revealed as intellectual lightweights.
Students, therefore need to understand that when their professor objects to being recorded, it is a statement of contempt for them. The professor is, in effect, saying to his or her students:
“Listen, I can get away with this intellectually shallow, emotion-based, propaganda when you are the only people who actually hear it. You aren’t wise enough to perceive it as such. But if enough people over 21 years of age hear it, I’m toast.”
If a professor meets privately with a student, all rules governing the recording of conversations without permission should apply.
But when a professor stands in front of a class, he or she is in the public domain. Moreover, the public is paying at least part of this professor’s salary at virtually every university. We therefore have a right and even a duty to know what professors say publicly in classrooms.
In fact, I would encourage every student who cares about truth and intellectual honesty to record what their professors say in class. I would also encourage every parent to find out what they are paying for. And I would likewise encourage professors to record themselves in order to protect themselves against doctored material.
Any professor who is not ashamed of what he or she is saying in class should welcome being recorded.
And any student taking a class with a professor who objects to being recorded should know that this objection is almost always equivalent to the professor saying: “I want you to hear what I say in class, because I’m quite confident that you can’t differentiate between instruction and indoctrination. But if what I say goes public, people who do know the difference will expose me as a propagandist.”
They can object all they want. I’m going to record them for the purpose of study. No recording? No pay for course.
Stable Cox?
Probably just loves horses.
Ok, so I will date myself with this response, but when I went to college one of the items you brought was your cassette recorder to tape lectures.
When did we stop allowing students to do that?
They object to recording for the same reason that they cover their face when they riot. They don’t want to be identified for what they really are.
This is why the adults need to take back the classrooms. A rant about Trump in a human sexuality class (what is that?) is not part of the syllabus, therefore subject to any and all recordings.
This is why the adults need to take back the classrooms. A rant about Trump in a human sexuality class (what is that?) is not part of the syllabus, therefore subject to any and all recordings.
exactly. One of my first purchases before my first semester was sony recorder.
Point one: recording lectures used to be commonplace and now the professors don’t want their true words heard outside the classroom? Ridiculous! How is competence established?
Point two: GET RID OF TENURE! That was pushed through just so this sort of thing wouldn’t matter in the light of day.
I felt as you do, that tenure should be abolished, but I’m not so sure any more. As Glenn Reynolds wrote on Instapundit, in many institutions the only reason there are any conservatives there at all is that they received tenure at a time when the university may have been more open to their point of view, or they managed to conceal their perspective until they received tenure.
I think that I am still opposed to it, and that the schools must reform from the top down, but there is another point of view.
Mike Adams as well is probably only a professor because he is tenured.
Better to get rid of all of the administrators whose positions have been created over recent decades.
Simple way to fix this problem. If a college wants federal money (including student loans) they have to allow unrestricted recordings of classroom lectures.
I doubt we get there, but if we’re going to lend what is now 1.2 Trillion dollars to these Snowflakes to go to college, we should start applying our own strings, for once.
I teach 90% of my classes online; everything I say, in text or by voice, is recorded. There are times when I wince at something I wrote or said earlier, wishing I had presented it differently, but I stand for what I stand for, which is the veracity and relevance of the course material, and I would be OK with anyone reading or hearing it. A professor who doesn't want to be recorded in what is supposed to be the ultimate rendition of the public square, the college campus, doesn't deserve to be a professor.
In the 1980s and 1990s, recording lectures was a common form of studying, because taking notes can cause one to miss some of the lecture, and I found that reviewing my notes WHILE listening to the lecture later on made for far better retention of information, especially when the course covered highly detailed information.
At least 1/2 of the students in my classes would record the lectures.
But given what the “instructors” are spewing these days, I can understand why they wouldn’t want it to get out.
Mark
That reminds me of a scene from the movie, "Real Genius," where at the beginning of the semester, there is a class full of people with the professor, later there are some and then more and more recorders, and finally there's a big reel to reel recorder giving the lecture, while every student desk has a tape recorder on it, and not a single person in the class room.
Mark
Hillary and the DNC has some emails released that are embarrassing (to say the least). The defense is to ignore the content of the emails and attack the fact and method whereby they were released (hacking).
This ding bat has her rant publicized and the defense is to ignore the content and inappropriateness of her rant, and attack the poor schmuck who recorded and made it public.
Students should just get permission up front to record the lectures. The professor could not deny permission to record because students with auditory impairments, auditory processing disorders, ADHD, autism, etc. would need an audio recording as a “reasonable accommodation” under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The professor is “performing” in a publicly owned facility for the benefit of the public, albeit a select group—students.
The instructor needs to get off her high horse.
The students are buying the package, which is deceptively labeled "knowledge". They would probably not be so inclined to spend good money on the product if they could see inside the package beforehand.
As for being free on the web, good instruction is already out there, just elsewhere.
And when he got tenure, he was a leftist.
Now that he's a conservative Christian, as much as the lefties would like to, they can't get rid of him.
Even so, he has said tenure should be abolished.
Interesting. I always wondered about that.
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