When Online Trolls Show Up in Class, Should Professors Be Able to Ban Them?

Public scholars are well acquainted with online hatred. But professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are debating what to do when the vitriol ceases to be just virtual and takes a seat in the front row of the classroom.

Jay Rosenstein, a professor of media and cinema studies, has fielded longtime animosity for criticizing the university’s former mascot, Chief Illiniwek. Though the mascot was retired more than a decade ago, fierce allegiance lives on. Last year Rosenstein made headlines after he was accused of following an Illiniwek supporter into a public bathroom and filming him. The professor was detained by the campus police, but no charges were filed. Rosenstein maintains that he didn’t film the Illiniwek supporter, and that he did not follow him into the bathroom.

One person, in particular, has harassed Rosenstein repeatedly, he said. For the past year, this person has posted “really disparaging comments” about him on social media, calling him a sexual predator, saying he should be in jail, and telling him that he’s a danger to his students, Rosenstein said. The person also showed up at faculty senate meetings to criticize him in person, according to the professor.

Last semester, Rosenstein said, this virtual hater enrolled in one of his classes.

After the first day of class, Rosenstein said, he approached his dean and the university police but was told there was nothing that could be done. The person had enrolled in the course as a nondegree student.

In a complaint later filed against the professor, the person — whom Rosenstein, citing student-privacy laws, declined to describe — justified taking the class in the belief that Rosenstein was “teaching hatred,” he said.

Nor would Rosenstein say how many class sessions this person attended — only that the enrollment lasted all semester. “The whole class was conducted under that dark cloud,” he said.

In November, Rosenstein drafted a resolution, to be considered by the faculty senate, reported The News-Gazette, in Champaign. If a student has displayed a history of “persistent trolling, harassment, obsession with, or stalking” of a faculty member, either online or in person, the corresponding department could prevent that student from taking a class taught by that faculty member, the resolution says. An exception could be made if the class is required for graduation.

A classroom is a workplace, which should be devoid of stalkers and harassers, Rosenstein said. “When you let a person into a classroom who is not there for any educational purpose, and in fact is there for nefarious purposes,” he argued, “you destroy the integrity of the classroom.”

Some of his colleagues think a ban goes too far. Classrooms must be safe, said Bruce Rosenstock, a professor of religion and a faculty senator, but there can’t be a “litmus test” to silence disruptive voices. Classroom discussions can get heated, and such a policy could be used as a cudgel.

Rosenstein’s resolution was debated on the senate floor, producing “amendments on amendments,” said Bettina M. Francis, chair of the senate’s executive committee and an associate professor of entomology. It was shunted to a subcommittee, where professors revised it.

How to Define ‘Trolling’

There’s sympathy for Rosenstein’s position among faculty members. “The classroom is, after all, sacred,” Francis said, and to compromise it is a terrible thing. But one also must protect the students’ freedom of speech, she said. One senate member worried that barring students from classes could pre-emptively infringe on their rights, she said.

Another question that professors considered is how to define “trolling attacks,” a phrase Rosenstein used in the resolution to describe what seems to be happening more and more frequently to academics.

What one person might call a “tough political critique,” another would call a “personal attack,” said Nicholas Burbules, a professor of education policy who chairs a senate subcommittee on the issue. Would calling someone a “fascist anti-intellectual,” he asked, cross a line? The context often changes, he said, depending on who’s speaking.

It became clear, he said, that banning students for what they might do in class, based on what they’ve previously said, isn’t the right approach. Instead, he said, the subcommittee focused on what professors could do if a student became a disruption.

All professors have students who argue, he said. But it can reach a point where “you’re not even able to function in the classroom anymore.”

When it gets to that point, the university already has policies in place to redress such behavior, Burbules said. It’s just that many professors aren’t aware of what options they have. In extreme cases, he said, professors can excuse students from their classrooms. But the goal is to meet with the student, come to an understanding, and eventually allow the student back to class, he said.

Burbules and the other panel members rewrote the resolution, removing a reference to a department’s ability to ban students and recommending that existing policies be reviewed, clarified, and organized into a single online resource.

The revised resolution will be discussed at the senate’s next meeting, on Monday.

But the discussion about online harassment isn’t over, Burbules said.

“We’re struggling with the question of how do you balance a desire to protect faculty from unfair, hostile attacks, while at the same time acknowledging this pretty broad range of free speech, including critical free speech, of professors,” he said.

Rosenstein thinks the subcommittee’s revisions miss his point. “Would you want someone sitting next to you, right now, who for the past year has been posting all sorts of horrible things?” he asked. Especially when your boss tells you there’s nothing he can do, he added, until that person acts out.

He said he’s done with senate resolutions. He’s got a different solution to avoid at least the online hate: “I’m just going to quit social media forever.”

Clarification (1/30/2019, 3:21 p.m.): A previous version of this article stated that Rosenstein followed an Illiniwek supporter into a bathroom and filmed him. Rosenstein maintains that he did not follow anyone into a bathroom, and that he did not film the person. The article has been updated to reflect those statements.

Emma Pettit is a staff reporter at The Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter @EmmaJanePettit, or email her at emma.pettit@chronicle.com.