Poster project receives national media attention

***UPDATED***

After allegedly forcing students to create anti-gun posters for a social awareness activity, the case against an instructor in art is now closed, according to a statement issued on April 10.

The controversy began when a student complained that Jennifer Yucus, assistant professor of art and graphic design, for compelling students from her classes to participate in an anti-concealed carry on campus project by using personal art materials and university resources.

In a statement released on April 10 by university officials, Yucus’ intent was to draw awareness of the use of graphic art to promote social issues.

“It is the opinion of the administration that this issue has been resolved satisfactorily and with the professor’s full cooperation,” the statement read.

Yucus refused the comment.

In an e-mail sent to The Wichitan, dated March 5, Yucus e-mailed colleagues encouraging them to participate in the anti-guns on campus campaign.

“Every spring semester I take a day of our classes to do a social awareness activity with my students,” Yucus said in the e-mail. “This year, I would like to work with the entire art department and mass communication department to collaborate on an anti-gun on campus campaign.”

Yucus later wrote in the same e-mail that the campaign would be done April 1, “as it is April Fool’s Day. Only a fool would allow guns on campus.”

MSU Police Chief Dan Williams discussed campus safety with her students during the event.

“The assignment was to design a poster for anti-gun awareness,” said Melody Gregory, junior in graphic student. “The police chief came in and talked to us about the current laws and the issue. Then she gave us the choice of if we didn’t feel comfortable to try looking at it from a designers point of view. If you don’t feel comfortable with doing it, then you can make a anti-campus violence poster, but no one went with the anti-violence. We all went for the original cause.”

Gregory, who was in Yucus’ Graphic Design II course, said she did not witness student outrage by the assignment.

“I aware of what kind of design she does,” Gregory said. “She does a lot of awareness design and that’s something I was interested in too so I just took it as an opportunity to do something of that nature.”

Gregory was not in the same class as the student who filed the complaint. She said even before the original story ran on Campus Reform, she heard talk about a student being upset about the project.

“I didn’t anyone really complain about it until after the complaint came out and then everyone was talking about the complaint,” Gregory said. “That’s when people started picking sides.”

When the art project hit the Internet, Gregory said she found it inconsiderate.

“The fact that someone would go from zero to 60 and not going through the proper authorities with contacting the teacher, chair, dean and then the president,” Gregory said. “This could’ve easily solved within our own department.”

Alanah Priolo, junior in graphic design, was in Yucus’ Graphic Design 1 class, which also participated in the event, but in a different class from Computers for Artists in which the student who filed the complaint was enrolled. Priolo said Yucus, who has been teaching at MSU since 2010, let students know where she stood on the issue.

“She did say that she was pushing for this [anti-gun campaign], but at the same time she told us if you don’t feel comfortable with the anti-gun thing then you can make anything anti-violence,” Priolo said.

She said at first her group deliberated on if they would pursue the anti-gun topic and said Yucus suggested her group do anti-campus violence instead, but her group ended up following the anti-gun format anyways.

“No one [in my class] was vehemently against it,” Priolo said. “I don’t think she forced it, but it wasn’t like she just mentioned it. When she first talked about it I wasn’t sure because I don’t know how I feel about this law.”

Yucus created a petition on change.org to Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas State Legislature stating, “Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, strongly opposes the proposed bill that would allow conceal carry weapons on campus.”

“It’s not like we got a grade of this so it’s not like she was forcing us to do it for a grade,” Priolo said. “It was just an in-class thing. She did say she was pro-gun, just anti-gun on campus.”

According to Priolo, Yucus simply wanted student’s attention brought to the issue.

“She just wanted our attention brought to it and for us to have a stand on it, preferably against I would think because that’s what she was wanting, but [the point of the assignment] was to just be aware,” she said.

In an email obtained by The Wichitan on April 2, Yucus said she wanted to confirm that she did give her students a choice.

“I just wanted to be sure that [The Wichitan] note that I instructed students to choose either the topic of anti conceal on campus or anti campus violence,” Yucus said in the email. “I just wanted to clarify and made sure it was known that students had an option.”

This is the third time Priolo has had Yucus as a professor and said she is very professional.

“She’s a good teacher,” Priolo said. “She is strict on something’s, but I think that is helpful in a way.”

Priolo said if somebody had a problem with the assignment, they could’ve said something directly to Yucus without consequences.

“She wouldn’t have given them an alternative assignment,” she said. “But at the same time, she did say sometimes employees give you a certain task and even though as an artist you don’t have to go with it, you do it because it’s your job.”