OUR VIEW: Scandal rocked the art department last week when a story about professor Jennifer Yucus’ anti-gun violence assignment hit the national media.
Jennifer Yucus, an assistant professor of art, is under fire because of questionable tactics she used to petition Gov. Rick Perry to “say no” to a bill that would allow students to carry concealed handguns on campus.
According to a report by campusreform.org last Tuesday, Yucus violated a Texas State statute that prohibits state employees from using their authority and/or state money to further a political agenda.
An anonymous student in Yucus’ class contacted the blog to expose the situation, but the student never contacted the professor, department chair, dean or provost to address the situation, which is accepted protocol when a student has a concern about a class.
Apparently Yucus has been cleared of any wrong doing, but that was without any meeting between the student complainant, or any faculty at all, leaving an heir of confusion among followers of the story. The matter is not closed.
In fact, local and national media outlets, including the Times Record News and KFDX, took the original story from Campus Reform and published it, appearing as an objective news article.
However, Campus Reform is a blog site that is a project of the nonprofit Leadership Institute, with a specific agenda of promoting conservative activism.
The blog has a specific agenda that envelops ideas of recruiting students to become conservative activists in their universities, which is exactly why one must question why so many respectable news outlets, such as TRN and KFDX, have taken their “opinion” as an objective stance on the matter.
We know on which side of the fence Campus Reform stands.
They must have been foaming at the mouths to have a student, of which they refuse to share any identity, to further supplement their own political platform while, at the same time, criticizing Yucus for doing the same.
Even if all the muck is blatantly untrue, both parties’ silence after the fact does nothing to help their causes.
Furthermore, if students feel so passionately about their stance, then they should attach a name to the accusation, an accusation which was apparently never filed as a formal complaint with the university.
The student “cried wolf.”
And it gets better – Oliver Darcy at Campus Reform told The Wichitan they had been contacted by the student two weeks ago – before the story grabbed national attention and before the Yucus’ anti-gun Facebook page had even been created.
Something definitely smells fishy.
All we know is that the story has turned from one of possibly questionable actions on the professor’s part, and turned into one of sensationalism in a time of heated debate over the gun-control issue.
Administrators, the student and the faculty involved need to explain themselves.
The situation is not closed.
