Remember this?

ASU’s paper reported Monday that one of the professors is going to be arraigned for assault. I don’t have word on what happened to Mitchell’s charges for intimidation and harassment, but I’d imagine they were dropped for being baseless.

Hello readers of the Arizona Growler.  My name is Jeff Rutledge, and I suppose this post finally fulfills the group blog intent the Growler was founded with.  My search for a more meaningful blogging experience than Xanga has led me here, so for my first post I’d like to submit the following for your consideration:

Via Sonoran Alliance, here’s a little something about Gov. Napolitano’s record you might enjoy. I couldn’t find whom to credit, though, other than YouTube user AZGovernorVideo.

This is what I have verbatim from Mrs. Mitchell:

Breaking News: About 45 minutes ago [This is 3:55pm yesterday by my calculations –GPO], the police detective Osborne told me that charges have now been filed against me for “intimidation and harrassment.” Apparently, the flyers we put up (see attached) caused the professor to feel intimidated. Also, the police department says it was misrepresentation of them to put the ASU police phone # at the bottom of the flyers.

Additionally, the flyers somehow made it into residence hall postings.

My defense:

• I am extremely sorry for my role in the flyers. I had no idea it would interfere with the police investigation whatsoever.
• I actually thought we were helping the police. Additionally, I didn’t even file the charges until Tuesday because I thought I had to do the footwork to identify the professors first.
• I’ve never been involved in a criminal case before; I don’t know the processes of investigation and what’s not allowed.
• Since I am not a student here, I also did not know the posting policies, and had I known them, I would surely have abided by the rules. I am sorry about that too.
• The “WANTED…for assault” that the professor believes may have implicitly indicated her in the crime was just a theme on the Old Wild West kind of posters. We do live in Arizona, after all. It was a catchy look or theme to the flyer to get students’ attention.
• There was absolutely no vindictive or pre-meditated motive at work here. The flyers were thrown together last-minute in the heat of the moment, and students were passing them out because they felt indignant for their recruiter.
• The one and only motive of the flyer was simple: we wanted to identify the professors.

The sole press coverage of the assault that I’ve found is coming from the Douglas Daily Dispatch, which hasn’t mentioned the counter-charges.

Additionally, “johnny,” claiming the URL of the Student Press Law Center, thinks that Mrs. Mitchell is a racist.

i’m a white guy, emily mitchell sounds racist to me. for most of american history, minorities have been excluded. often brutally. terrorized. now you’ve started this group. sounds like a). a great way for emily mitchell to draw attention to her pathetic self and b). racists, ignorant about the past, finding ridiculous excuses to exclude non-whites and stir up racism. so minorities arent excluded from this club? why the hell would they want to join a club committed to their exclusion?
what an embarrassment for ASU.

As I said before, I dismiss the general notion of “hate crime” on constitutional grounds, and I don’t even agree with the CAMASU’s premise. There’s at least two things to learn here (with more to come):

• Just because you don’t agree with someone doesn’t justify assault! Unfortunately, the attitude within academia these days seems to be in favor of heckling or assaulting anybody with whom one does not agree right out of the marketplace of ideas. Just take a look at how Columbia University dealt with Minutemen Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist.
• The liberal response to CAMASU, if they are not hypocritical, should be exactly the same as their response to other “minority” groups on campus. As I said in a letter to the Wildcat earlier this year:
  

  […]

  University policy on multiple levels is bent on painting us students with a large brush into segregated factions whose members are apparently unable to develop social and professional relationships with members of any other faction. “Student affairs” offices split students into their own little racial hangouts. The greek system’s answer to diversity problems is to separate minorities into their own little fraternities and sororities apart from the others. The campus at large is no longer made up of over 35,000 individual students with unique thoughts, abilities and experiences; it is rather a collection of arbitrary demographic numbers based, if I may paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., upon the color of our skin rather than the content of our character.

  So long as the university continues to encourage segregation between ethnicities, we will have made progress neither through the term of our new university president nor since the days of the forced segregation against which good and decent Americans of all ethnicities fought mere decades ago.

Related posts:

• Breaking: Charges filed against Mitchell
• ASU “hate crime” followup
• Breaking: Conservative field rep assaulted, harrassed by ASU professors

Update III: Followed up.

Emily Mitchell, a field representative for Leadership Institute, reports via email that two Arizona State University professors assaulted, injured, and harassed her yesterday over her support of Caucasian-American Men of ASU, an officially-recognized campus group.  Unfortunately for the assailants, she has video.

Mitchell’s hate crime report to the campus LBGTQ group, which is completely on her side on grounds of free speech, is as follows:

At ASU on Friday, September 29, I was verbally and physically assaulted by two professors who refused to reveal their names or departments.  Both told me my club, Caucasian American Men of ASU, “is a racist agenda.”  In truth, the club is about ENDING all forms of racial exclusion on campus by asking for equality.  When I prompted them to read my flyer to learn that we are trying to end racism and sexism, they both refused.  I was called “racist” by one professor “definitely racist,” by the other.  At this point, I pulled out the camera to get them saying this on tape, because I was sure no one would believe me without evidence.  Since my video camera is just a feature of a snapshot-style camera, they may not have realized they were being video taped.

I asked if I could record their viewpoint for educational purposes, and that our group encouraged open debate.  They said “OK,” but as soon as I began, one professor said I didn’t have her permission to take her picture.  She argued with me and then tried to steal my camera, wrangling me for it.  At this point, she managed to hit the big button that stops recording, but of course there is video of her snatching for it.  When she couldn’t pry it out of my hands, she deliberately took her thumb and tried to push the auto-extending lens back into the body of the camera, crunching the device that extends the lens.

I refuse to let go of my personal property, holding on tightly. She continues to crunch her thumb into my camera, and I’m now sure this is deliberate.  In the physical struggle to keep or damage my camera, she digs her hands in so hard her short fingernails scratch my hand until I bleed between my index and middle fingers.  I somehow manage to physically pry her fingers out of my skin and off my camera.

Shaking now, I was determined to get her and the other professor saying what they said to me on video.  I held the camera up while the assailant said, “You can’t take my picture because it’s illegal.  I work with indigenous peoples all the time, and they would never do that.”  After several other tidbits, two I remember verbatim as, “You have a racist agenda,” and “You have problems to work out.”  I realized the camera wasn’t running and I pressed the button harder this time.  Because she damaged the button, when I pressed it, it didn’t immediately begin recording (I now have to press it harder).  At this point, I try to get them to repeat their hate crime speech, and they don’t deny it.  They also refuse to reveal their identities.  The only information they would give me is that they are in “College of Fine Arts.”  I have the videos.

Epilogue:  I spent the rest of the afternoon with CAMASU students trying to make CAMASU a university-recognized group.  At almost 5:00, I went to the College of Fine Arts hoping a secretary could identify the faculty members for me.  A secretary was still there, Sherri Thompson (phone number removed –GPO), and, shaking like a leaf, I explained my situation.  I showed her the videos, and she was so appalled, she called cell phones to get the cell phone numbers of the people needed to immediately file an incident report.  I was advised to go to student health to clean up the wound and put some ice on it.  I have not heard back about the incident report, nor do I know what the consequences or procedures are for that, nor do I know if it’s different from reporting a hate crime.  But I figured I can use all the help I can get finding these women who hurt me so badly, physically and psychologically.

As Sherri was busily orchestrating the report, the Dean of the College of Fine Arts, Dean Kim, walked past us and into his office.  The secretary rushed after him to his office to explain the incident.  I followed.  Sheepishly entering his office, I showed him my injury and the videos.  He was apologetic and appalled, saying he was embarrassed and that it should be taken care of.  However, he didn’t recognize the faculty either.  He also explained that there are many, many faculty members in the College of Fine Arts.

So now I want to press charges, but I have no idea how.  And since I didn’t immediately call the police, and because by the time I would have, they had already vanished, I feel like now I have to get identification myself of these women.  But in order to do that, I will have to visit every department in the College of Fine Arts and ask the secretaries if they recognize the professors.

Should I just go department to department looking for their identification?  How do I find these people who hurt my feelings?  The whole point of our group is to END racism and sexism on campus.  Being called a racist is one of the most damaging insults I could have received, because racism is the very cause I’m trying to obliterate.

I REALLY NEED HELP!  Please help me find the women who accused me of a label without first even listening to me or reading my flyer.

12 News in Phoenix picked up on it and has this video about CAMASU, but not the violent incident.  Google News as of posting only makes mention of CAMASU, but not the incident, despite LI having put out a press release.

Emily has also been working very hard to promote change on the University of Arizona campus; I consider her a close associate.  At minimum, the professor who injured her ought to be fired on the spot.  The second surely doesn’t know anything about First Amendment freedom of the press: you have no right to privacy in your own conduct in a public area.  At least they weren’t political science professors.

Oddly enough, FIRE’s speech code rating of ASU is better than UA: a yellow as opposed to red.  Let’s see if they prove themselves worthy of yellow.

Update: Another press release. CAMASU students are now posting “Wanted” flyers for the two professors, but they are meeting resistance from the police, who contend that the flyers may “interfere in the investigation.” I’m not sure why the police have a problem; vandals are tearing down the flyers anyway.

TEMPE, AZ — Students at Arizona State University (ASU) posted “Wanted” flyers on campus yesterday in an attempt to identify two female professors who harassed and injured a female student recruiter at the Tempe campus.

But other members of the university community were not as willing to help find the two women.

“Within three hours someone had started taking down the flyers,” said Emily Mitchell, the Leadership Institute recruiter who was assaulted.

Members of the new, independent, student group, the Caucasian American Men of ASU (CAMASU), posted and handed out the flyers on Tuesday afternoon. The flyers pictured the two unknown professors who confronted Emily.

This morning ASU Police told Emily that they received “some complaints” about the flyers and requested that additional ones not be posted. And according to Laura Gill, an ASU police officer, the posters could “interfere with the investigation.”

Emily, a field representative for the Leadership Institute’s Campus Leadership Program, has filed a police report but is unable to press charges until she can identify her assailants.”

Emily also went to the College of Fine Arts, where the professors claimed to teach, and spoke with Dean Kwang-Wu Kim. Dean Kim said he did not recognize the pictures of the two faculty members, but was appalled at their behavior.

The initial confrontation occurred on Friday, September 29 while Emily recruited for the CAMASU group. The professors claimed Emily had “a racist agenda” and called her “a sexist.” One professor became aggressive, attempted to steal Emily’s camera, and scratched her, drawing blood.

Emily plans to press charges as soon as the assailant is identified.

To see images of the flyers click here: http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/press/

Update II: On the flip side of things, another Leadership Institute recruiter is being threatened with arrest for…uh…recruiting (without permission!).

Immediately following university President Robert Shelton’s declaration of support for becoming an "Hispanic-Serving Institution," the Wildcat looks alone in its support.  Yesterday and today, letter writers blasted the plan.

Okay, so one of those letters was mine.  And the supporters probably aren’t the vocal type, either.  Let’s see what this does.

Update: Later on, one guy did post in the comments of today’s mailbag.  Perhaps he’s a good example of Tucson High Magnet School’s lack of effectiveness in civic education.  After all, we are talking about a school where teachers openly encourage students to skip school in favor of pro-illegal immigration rallies and guest speakers tell students about how "Republicans hate Latinos."

Update II: Moreover, another teacher at Tucson High opposed a 9/11 memorial there.  One particular Republican henceforth called the school a "sweatshop of liberalism." (ht: Flopping Aces)

Gabrielle Giffords’ busted ad Photo taken from Arizona Daily Star article

Former Wildcat editor Daniel Scarpinato may have been accused as being part of some liberal conspiracy to kill public democracy.  I think he’s just being a good journalist.

His latest furor-raising article is an investigation over Arizona District 8 U.S. House candidate Gabrielle Giffords’ latest television ad, entitled ‘Blocked.’ (video)

Giffords claims that she blocked a late-night "vote" to cut health-care funding while serving in the Arizona State Senate.  Not only was it not actually dark outside, as Scarpinato’s look into U.S. Naval Observatory data shows, but it wasn’t actually a vote.  Rather, it was a quorum call.  Moreover, Giffords was absent when she could have cast a vote to kill the move.

The Star’s editorial board agrees, too.  Major kudos.

Update: Wizbang has picked up on the story.  I definitely want to see this go national for a little while; Giffords deserves some negative blogosphere attention.