Prayer service for Concordia University-Wisconsin

[Dave Benke]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q8NZOfhLl8

Gets interesting about 4 minutes in. They're having a convocation at Concordia Chicago this morning about this incident. Apparently the professor was banned from campus and refused to honor the ban and so was arrested with much fanfare upon his return. Very theatrical. Everything is systemically racist, apparently, including all things CUC.

Where might one learn the background to this situation at CUC?

I just learned it this morning at our staff devotions from a teacher with kids at CUC. Apparently he is an English prof or some such.

Checking down the You Tube video, the concern is expressed about two people with regard to his being banned from campus  - the President and the Provost.  The Provost was, I believe, one of the original finalists for CUWAA President.  Prof. Stapleton's CV is here:  https://www.cuchicago.edu/faculty/college-of-theology-arts--humanities/division-humanities/paul-stapleton/.

He has East Coast credentials from Boston College and Fordham with extensive work on King Oswald and the Adoration of the Cross.  The beef seems from what was said in the video with his being banned from campus without reference to the policy handbook, and that the leadership is racist. 

The one example used by Prof. Stapleton is right from the really old days - that black male slaves were bred for certain roles and therefore better at sports but not leadership.  Jimmy the Greek and Al Campanis were the purveyors of that thinking, but it kind of went away, at least in public, before 1990:  https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-04-09-mn-366-story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1988/01/16/jimmy-the-greek-says-blacks-are-bred-for-sports/128a889e-83e2-44a3-b911-851d5281ade4/

Was that said or intimated by somebody in a teaching or staff/faculty role?  Don't know.   But those are the two allegations by the Professor toward the school - racism among the leadership and lack of following policy and procedure.

Dave Benke


Dave Benke

[Michael Slusser]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q8NZOfhLl8

Gets interesting about 4 minutes in. They're having a convocation at Concordia Chicago this morning about this incident. Apparently the professor was banned from campus and refused to honor the ban and so was arrested with much fanfare upon his return. Very theatrical. Everything is systemically racist, apparently, including all things CUC.

Where might one learn the background to this situation at CUC?

I just learned it this morning at our staff devotions from a teacher with kids at CUC. Apparently he is an English prof or some such.

Prof. Stapleton said CUC is acting against not only people of color, LGBTQetc, but also Catholics. We're coming up in the world.

Peace,
Michael

[peter_speckhard]

I think it telling that the professor says to his assembled followers, "This is what America looks like!" I agree. In this case it looks like extremely patient and professional police politely enforcing the law, and a progressive nut job desperately trying to look abused and manhandled. It looks like a Christian university not wanting its own professors publicly contradicting the teachings the university stands for, and getting accused of all manner of systemic crimes.   

[Steven W Bohler]

I think it telling that the professor says to his assembled followers, "This is what America looks like!" I agree. In this case it looks like extremely patient and professional police politely enforcing the law, and a progressive nut job desperately trying to look abused and manhandled. It looks like a Christian university not wanting its own professors publicly contradicting the teachings the university stands for, and getting accused of all manner of systemic crimes.   

The background I am trying to understand is why he was banned from campus in the first place.  It would be interesting if we had one professor banned for supporting "wokeism" on-campus, and another banned for challenging it.

[Michael Slusser]

Concordia University Chicago has both a Black Student Union and a Latino Student Union. https://www.cuchicago.edu/concordia-experience/student-services/multicultural-student-engagement/

Rev. Daniel Gard could probably tell us whether CUC has a Faculty Handbook (in the video Stapleton says it doesn't), but if there is one, as a Visiting Associate Professor, Dr. Stapleton would probably not have many rights under it.

Peace,
Michael

[Jeremy_Loesch]

Was that Larry David on the CUC campus? "Are you making fun of the way I sit? This is how I sit. I sit like this all the time."

That was the only funny bit of the video.

Peter's comment about the RF police department was right- they were calm, professional, polite, patient. It was the students who were acting like children and the grownups/faculty acting like children.

Wail for thee our alma mater.
Wail for thee maroon and gold.

Jeremy (CURF 95)

[peter_speckhard]

I think it telling that the professor says to his assembled followers, "This is what America looks like!" I agree. In this case it looks like extremely patient and professional police politely enforcing the law, and a progressive nut job desperately trying to look abused and manhandled. It looks like a Christian university not wanting its own professors publicly contradicting the teachings the university stands for, and getting accused of all manner of systemic crimes.   

The background I am trying to understand is why he was banned from campus in the first place.  It would be interesting if we had one professor banned for supporting "wokeism" on-campus, and another banned for challenging it.

The common denominator being that both were banned from campus, apparently somewhat abruptly, and both think they were not given due process according to proper internal procedures, if any. Which begs the question, as Michael Slusser noted, of whether they even have any procedures for dealing with professors who teach or publish problematic things (surely they must), and whether they're following them.

[Dave Benke]

A difference in the two situations is that one is a rostered LCMS member (Schulz), the other (Stapleton) is not. 

Dave Benke

[Donald_Kirchner]

BTW, Dave, how are things outside your door?

[peter_speckhard]

A difference in the two situations is that one is a rostered LCMS member (Schulz), the other (Stapleton) is not. 

Dave Benke

Richard noted upstream that his outsider's perspective was that Schulz wasn't playing with a full deck. Stapleton's deck seems to consist of two or three cards-- the "They're institutionally racist!" of spades, the "They're LGBTQaphobes!" of hearts, and the "Police are pawns in an oppressive system!" of clubs.

What was amazing to me was how many of the bystanders actually thought it was the police's job to find out why the university had banned him from campus and to pass judgment on whether their reasons were good enough. Imagine if one of the those students got a restraining order against someone, then called the police when that person was trying to enter their apartment. They would expect the officers to remove the person on the legal force of the restraining order, not investigate the caller as to why there was a restraining order in the first place and whether it was justified. Stapleton kept shouting that the administration was using the police as their bodyguards. No kidding. Evey citizen does. "Hey cop! Those homeowners are just using you as their personal home defense system to protect them from burglars!"   

[Fcdwyn]

BTW, Dave, how are things outside your door?

13 injured in Brooklyn subway rush hour shooting this morning. Undetonated devices found.  You and yours OK, Dave?

K.S. Hahn 'CSL '72

[Dave Benke]

BTW, Dave, how are things outside your door?

13 injured in Brooklyn subway rush hour shooting this morning. Undetonated devices found.  You and yours OK, Dave?

K.S. Hahn 'CSL '72

My nephew (one of brother Mike's sons) and his wife and two young boys live in Sunset Park, where this took place.  He and his younger son were on the next train after the one where the shooting took place just around 8:30 AM.  The conductor told them to get the hell onto the train on 45th Street and off they went; they stopped at the 36th Street station where the train with windows shot out was located and took on passengers.  His wife teaches at the public school which is near that station.
Then the train rolled on and  he and his son (3 yrs old) got off at the 25th St. station, next down the line, and people began to run, because one of those who was shot was on their train and ran off.  Out they ran, with the little three year old happy because everyone was running.  Way too close for comfort.

Dave Benke

[D. Engebretson]

Very theatrical incident at CUC. Very unfortunate. Not professional.  "These are criminals inside!" Seriously? He must have known that he was being video taped.  He realized he had a 'stage'. He even deliberately fell to the ground. I felt for the officers. They only tried to uphold the law.  They even went the extra mile by calling the fire department and having the first responders check him out.

[Michael Slusser]

Very theatrical incident at CUC. Very unfortunate. Not professional.  "These are criminals inside!" Seriously? He must have known that he was being video taped.  He realized he had a 'stage'. He even deliberately fell to the ground. I felt for the officers. They only tried to uphold the law.  They even went the extra mile by calling the fire department and having the first responders check him out.

"Falling down"="going limp." Tried and true demonstrators' tactic, intended to accomplish exactly what happened at CUC. The EMTs were called because they have a gurney; the police weren't going to shoulder that (semi)limp body and haul it away in the back of a squad car.

I still have no idea what got him barred from campus, any more than I know the actual sequence of events up in Mequon. Both these men apparently really ticked off their administrations.

Peace,
Michael

[D. Engebretson]

BTW, there is an employee handbook at CUC and it is currently being updated. I'm told that it is "easy accessible".