Professor calls 911: Campus ROTC drill “terrorized” me
By Tyler Herrmann | March 29, 2016 | Comments
Many people look at the trend of trigger warnings and PC culture on college campuses and wonder what is wrong with today’s youth. Well, it seems that it may be, at least in part, learned behavior. Kids go to college in order to grow as individuals and expand their minds, and professors are trusted to help them transition into adulthood — but some are teaching oversensitivity by example.
Recently, the Army ROTC program at the University of North Dakota performed a routine training exercise on campus. This training was nothing remarkable, and the same sort of event occurs on a weekly basis on campuses around the country. So, why is it noteworthy? Because of the reaction of one professor.
UND Associate Professor Heidi Czerwiec saw two young uniformed men with dummy guns outside her office and called 911. After being informed that the men were ROTC cadets, Czerwiec called the ROTC department and left an angry voicemail.
She alleged there had been no advance notice about the training, despite the fact that an email providing notice of the training had gone out to the campus community a week prior.
In the voicemail, she said there was “no [expletive] reason why [she] should have to be terrorized like this, to look up and see gunman on the quad.” And, upon learning the event was nothing more than an ROTC training event that would be occurring repeatedly over the next several weeks, Czerwiec told the dispatcher “I guess I’ll be calling 911 for the next couple weeks — and I will. Every time.”
As if this episode were not enough, Czerwiec followed up her tantrum with a letter to the editor of the local paper. In her letter, titled “Military maneuvers startle already-stressed UND campus,” Czerwiec called the training an “unnecessary military maneuver” that was “highly inappropriate.” She closed with: “we’re already under financial and emotional attack. We don’t need to feel under physical attack, too.”
In subsequent reports about the incident Czerwiec claimed that some of the information was misleading. She claimed to have “nothing against ROTC or its cadets,” and said, “they are some of my finest students.”
This anti-military rhetoric is disappointing regardless of the source. It’s even more so when it comes from a professor and is directed towards the students she is meant to develop and mentor. These students have the bravery and fortitude to pursue a life of service and they shouldn’t be attacked for it. If anything in this scenario was unnecessary or highly inappropriate, it was Czerwiec’s conduct.
Read more at
http://redalertpolitics.com/2016/03/29/professor-calls-911-campus-rotc-drill-terrorized/#gpTRmJHwsdReSTf3.99
