VIDEO: Now-Suspended Professor in Space Helmet Calls Students ‘Vectors of Disease’
“Go complain to your dean … go ahead,” Mehler said. “I’m retiring at the end of this year and I [don’t care] any longer.”
It’s only January and we may already have the funniest College Insurrection story of the year.
From the Washington Post:
A professor welcomed students to class by calling them ‘vectors of disease to me.’ He has been suspended.
Some college students in Michigan might have expected their professor to cover the usual topics in a video kicking off the semester this week — attendance, grading, plagiarism. But Barry Mehler gave them a lot more than the basics.
Mehler, a history professor at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Mich., told his students he didn’t want to know anything about them, not even their names, because “you people are just vectors of disease to me.”
The 74-year-old said it didn’t matter how hard they worked in his class since he randomly predetermined their grades.And if they didn’t like any of that?
“Go complain to your dean … go ahead,” Mehler said. “I’m retiring at the end of this year and I [don’t care] any longer.”
As of early Friday, the 14-minute profanity-laced video has been viewed more than 210,000 times since Mehler posted it on Sunday. Mehler has been placed on administrative leave while Ferris State University investigates the incident. In a statement to The Washington Post, university president David Eisler said he “was shocked and appalled” by the video.
This is cued to start at the 4:37 mark but you may want to watch the whole thing. Strong language warning:
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
Seems like a nice guy. 🙄
He should have retired five years ago.
This is like a challenge. I’ve got four years to get as crusty as this guy.
Upon watching further in the video, it seems like a lot of his profanity-laden speech is a slightly-modified adaptation of a movie scene that appears later in the video, and which he uses to illustrate the concept of plagiarism to his students. I didn’t have time to watch his entire class, so for all I know, all of the shocking things he said were “plagiarized” from sources he played later. It’s possible we were all being put on.
Yeah…I have a feeling this wasn’t sincere. It’s too over the top and surreal. He also said his intent was humor…which of course could sound like a cop out but I think I believe him. Poor execution? Maybe. Us too quick to judge? Maybe.
Then why was he placed on administrative leave, and why was university president David Eisler “…shocked and appalled” by the video? Did they convict before the evidence was gathered?
Oh, that answer is too easy. Woke students complained about him, so coward administrators did the usual “verdict first, trial afterward” dance.
This incident could just be another “niggardly” incident writ large. A complainant too stupid to understand English has his complaint validated by an authority too stupid to understand English., then validated again by a higher authority who decides that the feelz of an idiot have a higher priority than the constitutional free speech rights of the persecuted party.
As we would say Down South…’Bless his heart. You know, he ain’t right in the head’
Poor guy probably is:
1. in the early stages of Alzheimer’s,
2. a brain tumor, or
3. possibly something as simple as traumatic hydrocephalus, the pressure of which can be very easily relieved.
Carefully observe the motions of his mouth when he is not speaking