THE CROSSES THEY CANNOT BEAR

Michelle Malkin's blog ^ | 14 April 2006 | Professor Jacobson

[stm]

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS - A professor at Northern Kentucky University said she invited students in one of her classes to destroy an anti-abortion display on campus Wednesday evening. NKU police are investigating the incident, in which 400 crosses were removed from the ground near University Center and thrown in trash cans. The crosses, meant to represent a cemetery for aborted fetuses, had been temporarily erected last weekend by a student Right to Life group with permission from NKU officials.

Public universities cannot ban such displays because they are a type of symbolic speech that has been protected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Witnesses reported "a group of females of various ages" committing the vandalism about 5:30 p.m., said Dave Tobertge, administrative sergeant with the campus police.

Sally Jacobsen, a longtime professor in NKU's literature and language department, said the display was dismantled by about nine students in one of her graduate-level classes.

"I did, outside of class during the break, invite students to express their freedom-of-speech rights to destroy the display if they wished to," Jacobsen said.

Asked whether she participated in pulling up the crosses, the professor said, "I have no comment."

She said she was infuriated by the display, which she saw as intimidating and a "slap in the face" to women who might be making "the agonizing and very private decision to have an abortion."

Jacobsen said it originally wasn't clear who had placed the crosses on campus.

She said that could make it appear that NKU endorsed the message.

Pulling up the crosses was similar to citizens taking down Nazi displays on Fountain Square, she said.

"Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. Some of my students felt the same way, just outraged," Jacobsen said.

NKU President James Votruba said any evidence of criminal conduct in the incident will be turned over to prosecutors. He said he appreciated the emotional nature of the abortion debate and was glad that diverse viewpoints are represented at the school, but he condemned the destruction of the crosses.

"Freedom-of-speech rights end where you infringe on someone else's freedom of speech," Votruba said.

"I don't buy the claim that this is an act of freedom of speech, to destroy property."

He said he was gathering information about the extent of Jacobsen's participation.

"I don't know if she was pulling up the crosses, but I think she was out there with the students. If so, as far as I'm concerned, she went outside the conditions of her employment," Votruba said.

He declined to say what consequences she might face. Jacobsen is a tenured professor who has been at NKU since 1980.

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Their security people are probably that part of the Department. Campus cops have a lot of the same powers as do regular police.

[stm]

A USAF Colonel found this out the hard way. Remember that libtard that spray-painted peoples cars?

[hsalaw]

Thanks. I didn't know that.

[walford]

In the topsy-turvy thinking of some academics, depicting aborted babies as people is to be merit being compared to NAZIs, while the more sensible position of regarding them as excess tissue to be discarded is sacrosanct.

Regardless of where you may stand on the abortion issue, silencing the opposing point of view by destroying its expression is precisely the means of the Brownshirts. Who are the NAZIs here?

[VOA]

Now we'll get to find out if North Kentucky U is a real University.
If it is, Prof. Jacobsen will rally the wymen and metrosexual males
of the campus to oust the President of the University.

All they need to do is call the folks who ousted Lawrence Summers from
Harvard for the obscene gesture of making a speculative comment.

[Hoodat]

"Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. Some of my students felt the same way, just outraged," Jacobsen said.

So typically liberal. Her actions are based entirely upon emotion rather than the exercise of critical thought and reason. I would expect such behavior from a criminal . . . Oops, she is a criminal.

[lastchance]

I looked at her course offerings. I was in college sometime before Noah stocked the ar. Vut I do seem to remember the type of courses listed as upper division graduate on her page would have been undergraduate and perhaps advanced high school classes at one time.
So I remain woefully unimpressed.