The Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater has responded to a controversy over a surreptitiously obtained classroom video of a guest lecturer lambasting Republicans by moving to bar students from recording and disseminating such footage.
Although the campus’s chancellor, Richard J. Telfer, has not yet signed off on the videotaping policy, statements issued by him and a spokeswoman on Thursday suggested he expected to approve it as soon as it lands on his desk.
“Faculty on this campus have the right to establish the policies for their individual classrooms,” Mr. Telfer said in a written statement.
“Also,” Mr. Telfer added, “I believe it is important that our faculty and students are able to have the free exchange of ideas without concern that what is said will be communicated beyond the limits of the classroom or campus.”
Kyle R. Brooks, the freshman who recorded the video that triggered the controversy, expressed frustration that the institution had responded to his producing the video rather than what it depicts: a guest lecturer denouncing many Republicans as racist, classist, sexist, homophobic, and dishonest.
“People should have been upset that he came into the classroom and said that,” Mr. Brooks said, “but instead they were upset that I recorded it and made it public.”
The question of how to deal with students’ videotaping of classroom interactions has become more pressing for colleges as technological advances have made both the production and dissemination of such recordings easier. The University of Wisconsin at Whitewater is one of several higher-education institutions that have come under fire in recent years after covertly obtained recordings of controversial statements by faculty members have been posted online.
Of 72 four-year colleges whose faculty leaders recently responded to a Chronicle question on the subject, 20 said they had policies intended to prevent the unauthorized recording and redistribution of classroom speech. In December officials at the University of Colorado at Boulder cited fears of such videotaping to justify their decision to discipline a sociology professor over a classroom skit on prostitution.
‘White Rage’
The incident that sparked the controversy at Whitewater occurred in late February, in an introductory sociology course called “Individuals and Society.” The instructor, Monique Liston, a doctoral student in urban education and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, had arranged for students to hear a guest lecture by Eyon Biddle Sr., political director and director of organizing for the Milwaukee-based Service Employees International Union Local 150.
Standing in front of the classroom, Mr. Biddle launched into a speech in which he accused Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin of legislating “narrow, rigid ways” and of undermining the voting rights of students and other traditionally Democratic constituents to secure long-term political advantage. Speaking of the 2010 Congressional elections, he accused Tea Party activists of doing the bidding of millionaires and said that much of the support Republicans received had been driven by hatred.
“The context of 2010 was white rage, to be honest with you,” Mr. Biddle said. “White people having to pay for health care for blacks and browns and gays.”
Mr. Brooks, who is secretary of the UW-Whitewater College Republicans, surreptitiously videotaped Mr. Biddle’s remarks and posted the footage on his Facebook page. He said one of his Facebook friends then forwarded the clip to Campus Reform, an advocacy group. Campus Reform, which bills itself as a watchdog group devoted to exposing political bias on college campuses, published a blog post about the video, which led to coverage by other conservative media outlets, including The Daily Caller, National Review, and Fox News.
Mr. Biddle could not be reached on Thursday for comment. Ms. Liston declined to comment, referring The Chronicle to Lauren Smith, an associate professor and chairwoman of Whitewater’s department of women’s and gender studies, who said in an email that she had “confidence in Ms. Liston’s teaching and her choices in the classroom.”
“When she brings in speakers, it is in order to foster discussion,” Ms. Smith said. “There is no indication that students have felt anything but free to express their perceptions and perspectives.”
For his part, Mr. Brooks said Ms. Liston “seems to be being fair to me” and, other than inviting Mr. Biddle to speak, has “kept her politics to herself.” He protested, however, that other Whitewater faculty members had been mentioning him by name in denouncing the videotaping incident in front of their classes. “It is almost like shaming,” he said.
Fears of Intimidation
The University of Wisconsin system has actually had a policy on the books since 1977 that allows faculty members to forbid students to use tape recorders, with exemptions made to accommodate students who need to tape classes because of a disability and have signed agreements not to forward to others such recordings or their transcriptions.
The resolution that Whitewater’s Faculty Senate unanimously adopted this month would extend that policy to video recordings, and says “the recording of class and other curricular activities is prohibited without the express permission of the instructor and notification to all students in the class.”
David Munro, an associate professor of information technology and business education who is the Whitewater Faculty Senate’s chairman, said by email on Wednesday that students “may be intimidated from sharing their views in a class if they fear that their comments might end up being recorded and then posted as part of a video on the Internet.” Faculty members who “present multiple sides of a complex and controversial issue,” he said, “fear that they may be recorded showing only one perspective.”
Gregory Scholtz, director of the American Association of University Professors’ department of academic freedom, tenure, and governance, on Thursday praised the Whitewater resolution as appropriate. He said colleges should have grievance procedures in place so students who feel an instructor has engaged in discriminatory or otherwise inappropriate speech can resolve the matter internally, not by recording the speech and making it public.
“Academic freedom,” he said, “is circumscribed or chilled when the instructor or the student has to fear that what they are saying in a class or doing in a class is going to be widely reported beyond the classroom.”
