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High school teacher tells student he can be arrested for criticizing Obama
After criticizing Mitt Romney, a North Carolina high school teacher yelled at a student for asking a question about Barack Obama, telling him that he could be arrested for criticizing Barack Obama.
Sarah Campbell wrote at the Salisbury Post Saturday that the heated exchange began "with a classroom conversation about a recent news story detailing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney allegedly bullying a classmate in prep school. It turns into a heated, sometimes confrontational debate."
“Didn’t Obama bully someone though,” one student asked, referring to an incident in Obama's memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” in which Obama admitted pushing a girl when other students called him her boyfriend.
“Stop, no, because there is no comparison,” the teacher said.
According to the teacher, Romney is “running for president," and therefore does not deserve the same respect as Obama, who "is the president.”
“Listen, let me tell you something, you will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom,” she said.
She went on to tell the student that he "will not" say what he wants about Obama, and asserted that it was a crime to "slander" the President. The student responded by recalling that many spoke ill of George W. Bush while he was President, and such arrests would violate the Constitutional right to free speech.
The teacher asked: “Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush?”
But Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College, told the Post he had “no idea” what the teacher was talking about when she claimed people "were arrested for saying bad things about Bush."
“I have never heard of anyone arrested for saying derogatory things about George W. Bush, which I am assuming she is referring to,” he said. “Her belief that if one slanders the president is not very accurate — if you ‘threaten’ the president, that is another story, and that is a criminal offense.”
Bitzer went on to say the student was more correct than the teacher.
“Her point about not being able to say anything ‘disrespectful’ about the president does fly in the face of the First Amendment, and while she may wish to enforce that edict about ‘respecting’ the president, the issue seems to have gotten personal on her part,” he added, saying that her attempt to make a point seems to have been overshadowed by her personal feelings toward Obama.
"Granted, she apparently tried to ensure that a respectful conversation was had about the president, but she seems to have taken things a bit too personally — and it appears the student was set on making a confrontation in the guise of raising a question about ‘who bullied who — both Romney and Obama'," he wrote.
Bitzer said the teacher was a “bit overboard in being rude towards the student,” but added that the student "was also trying to pick a fight."
The school system said it could not comment on the incident publicly, but said the social studies teacher - who was not identified - is still working for the district.
“The Rowan-Salisbury School System expects all students and employees to be respectful in the school environment and for all teachers to maintain their professionalism in the classroom. This incident should serve as an education for all teachers to stop and reflect on their interaction with students," the district told the Post in an email.
A video of the confrontation was uploaded to YouTube and had over 3,400 views as of this writing. The video appears to have been taken with a camera phone pointing to the ceiling and does not show the teacher or any of the students.
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