Students at Cypress College are demanding the resignation of the college president, accusing her of failing to support a teacher blasted by conservative media for arguing with a student in a viral Zoom video, as well as other staff targeted by threats and harassment.
Members of the North Orange County Community College District Student Coalition claim President JoAnne Schilling failed to “create an accurate public perception” after a student released a clip from a session of his Communication 100C class, in which his professor criticizes his support for the portrayal of police officers as heroes. The coalition plans to present its demands during a Board of Trustees meeting set to take place via Zoom on Tuesday, May 11.
The clip was recorded April 28. The student who released it, 19-year-old Braden Ellis, said he posted it to expose what he perceives as bias against conservative viewpoints on college campuses.
However, the professor’s colleagues and members of the student coalition say it was the professor’s job to critique his arguments. Her supporters say the recording gives a distorted view of the discussion, and has made numerous instructors at Cypress College the target of harassment since it was released. At least one threat directed toward the school prompted authorities to halt campus operations on Monday, May 3, school officials said in a statement later that week.
“I just wanted to congratulate you on being a useless idiot,” one man said in a voicemail shared with the Southern California News Group and addressed to Christie Diep, the president of the union representing community college professors in northern Orange County, Faculty United. The caller expresses disdain for her support of the teacher involved in the video, suggests Diep “get a job in the real f—— world” and refers to her as a derogatory term for female genitalia several times before hanging up.
Among the student demands is a public announcement regarding “the impact of white supremacist, Islamophobic and gendered attacks directed to our students, faculty, social media spaces and the Cypress College campus.” The coalition also is asking administrators to issue an apology to the teacher embroiled in the viral debate about cancel culture and academic freedom.
In an email dated Friday, May 7, Schilling told faculty at the community college that she reached out personally to the professor in the video to express concern for the safety or her and her students. She said the school’s decisions were made in the interest of protecting them, as well as “other faculty who were misidentified on social media.”
“Cypress College has supported and will continue to support the academic freedoms we know are essential in an institution of higher learning,” administrators said in a statement released Friday. “Equally important is our mission to serve our students in a safe learning environment.”
The school has not publicly named the professor in the video, citing her request to “protect her identity for her own safety,” the statement said. However, colleagues identified her as Faryha Salim, a Fulbright scholar who said she identifies as “unapologetically Muslim and queer” in a letter addressed to Cypress College administrators that was shared on social media.
In her remarks to Ellis, Salim said a lot of police officers have committed “atrocious crimes” and gotten away with them, and that she personally wouldn’t call the police even in a life-threatening situation because she doesn’t trust them. “My life is more in danger in their presence,” she told her student.
Administrators continue to review the matter, and had not publicly indicated as of Monday whether they believe Salim acted inappropriately. She has been on leave from the school amid the controversy swirling around her, and was removed from her classroom to “maintain her confidentiality and mitigate attacks from those who sought to threaten her as well as students in her class,” Cypress College officials said Friday.
In another statement dated April 30, administrators said the professor of Ellis’s class previously expressed that she did not plan to return to the campus in the fall. Salim was scheduled to teach an upcoming summer session of Communication 100C, according to printed copies of the Cypress College course catalog. But as of Monday, she was not listed on the school’s website as an instructor for the class. The college did not immediately comment on the schedule change.
The student coalition is calling for Salim’s reinstatement as an instructor this summer, in addition to its other demands.
Staff writer Teri Sforza contributed to this report.
