Cancel culture at University of Oregon

This is scary. It’s all secondhand, and I don’t know any of the people involved, but the person passing this along seems generally reliable and I have no reason to believe it’s not true. Here’s the story, from Cheyney Ryan, a retired University of Oregon law professor:

The University of Oregon Administration has been bringing student conduct charges against students involved in protesting Gaza. Its actions have raised–and continue to raise–serious questions about the violation of due process and respect for students. . . .

1/ The first protester, called her Mary, received a letter at the end of fall term charging her with “disrupting classes” by speaking over a bullhorn for “3 to 5 minutes” in front of Lillis. She was told she faced suspension for her actions. She was informed that there would be two meetings about it—one an informational meeting about the charges against her, the second a meeting to determine the outcome. . . .

Neither the letter charging her, nor its supplementary materials, provided ANY evidence that any classes had been disrupted. There were no complaints from professors, no complaints from students, no complaints from anyone. Zilch. . . . So, they had apparently charged this young woman–and threatened her with suspension–without having a shred of evidence for the charges in question. (By then, they had had two months to collect such evidence.)

The hearing officer assured us that this would be dealt with at the second hearing. It wasn’t. At the second hearing, there was still no evidence that any classes and been disrupted. . . .

2/ The second case is shorter, but continues the same theme. Protester number two, call him Mark, received a letter threatening him with suspension and charging him with writing a slogan on the steps of Johnson Hall with chalk. I asked Mark ahead of time if he had done it, and he told me he wasn’t even on campus that day.

At the first hearing, the hearing officer (a different one from the first case) told us that the evidence for the charge were videos taken by campus security, but they did not have the videos––nor had they seen them themselves. At the second hearing, we were shown two video clips taken of the other side of Johnson Hall, on 13th Ave. The first video clip only showed a pedestrian walking his Labrador Retriever along 13th Ave. The second, much longer video showed nothing at all. It apparently had been taken when literally no one was on campus.

I asked the hearing officer, “Is that it?” They responded, “I work with what I’m given.” Then they sensibly dismissed all charges. But I immediately raised the question: “Do you mean to tell me that you have charged this young man and threatened him with suspension without a single shred of evidence for what is being alleged?” The hearing officer rather sheepishly responded that they were not the one who decided to bring charges; again, they only dealt with what they were given.

Sounds pretty Kafkaesque, I’d say. One of the advantages of being at a public university is that they have to follow some procedures, so these stories did get out. But, threatening students with suspension based on zero evidence? That ain’t cool.

If you look up Ryan, you’ll see he’s an antiwar activist, which helps explain why he went back to Oregon to help out these students. If you read carefully, you’ll see that he labels them as “protesters,” and I assume they did something that was annoying enough to motivate the administration to pursue unsubstantiated charges against them. But, again, that’s no excuse for the administration’s behavior! It’s not appropriate, if someone does action A that annoys you, for you to then prosecute them under the pretext that they did action B.