Students in Abortion Vandalism Case Get Community Service, Professor Won’t
Jacobsen’s attorney Margo Grubbs, told the Cincinnati Post he [sic, see photo] was enraged by the decision to drop the charges against the students but keep them against the professor.
Apparently, Ms Grubbs does not subscribe to the common-sense idea that a teacher (aka, powerful authority figure) should be held accountable for the impressionable minds in her care. Grubbs contends that urging students to commit vandalism should be considered equivalent to their commission of it.
Ms Grubbs, I’m sorry, but whatever credence can be granted to the defense of “I was only following orders.” – it clearly cannot be applied to the issuer of those orders.
Thomas Beiting disagrees with Ms Grubbs on the same basis.
Thomas Beiting, who represents one of the students in the case, said Jacobsen told them they would not get in trouble because she claimed the Northern Right to Life student pro-life group did not have permission to put up the display. The group had actually obtained a permit from the university.
“These girls did not believe they would get in trouble,” Beiting told the Post.
Why did they not think they would get in trouble for vandalism? Because the person being paid to teach them told them they wouldn’t. Why didn’t they perceive a free speech issue, whether or not NKU had given permission for the display? Because their mentor told them her anger was more important.
“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.
We might well applaud a teacher who urged her students to commit civil disobedience, – even if we didn’t agree with the principle being challenged. But Sally Jacobsen misunderstands the meaning of the word “liberty” as practiced in Western civilization, and she compounded that ignorance with a lack of knowledge about a specific fact she could well have checked.
It is hard to imagine a greater breach of responsibility in the urging of civil disobedience, even if you are not a teacher. Jacobsen’s accountability is of a vastly higher level than her students’, and Ms Grubbs would do well to recognize it.
Update, 6:30PM, No diversion program for NKU prof
Grubbs is going to play dumb hardball? Seems to be a bet on how much effort will be dedicated to dragging Ms Jacobsen back from her “retreat.”
Rick Woeste seems to be up to the challenge:
Assistant Campbell County Attorney Rick Woeste objected to Professor Sally Jacobsen’s inclusion in the diversion program, which allows for charges to be dropped and later expunged after some form of community service.
As well he should.
…[Jacobson] was charged with theft, criminal mischief and criminal solicitation. But Grubbs said Jacobsen, who was out of town Thursday, was never served with papers informing her of the charges.
Maybe because she’s at an “undisclosed location?”.
District Judge Karen Thomas gave Jacobsen until May 23 to come to court to answer the charges.
Grubbs said Jacobsen is currently working on a paper on English author Virginia Wolfe at an undisclosed location, and might not be back by then.
I have a feeling Karen Thomas and Rick Woeste think she’d better be back by then. Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolfe?