Lisa A Walter was a DMV clerk who landed work as a security guard. In New York, a selection of campus security guards are deputized by local police and sheriffs. Not sure to what extent that applies in Wisconsin. Read the small section where she talks about telling parents their child has died and ask yourself given the circumstances described (house fire, suicide, bar fights off campus) if it is at all likely that it would have been the chief of security at the campus who had the task of talking to parents. Self-aggrandizing twit, this broad.

Under other circumstances, there would have been repercussions for harassing a member of the faculty and putting the campus in the cross hairs of his legal counsel, but this woman is an agent of privileged political interests. You won’t see the end of this behavior by higher ed apparatchiks until they’re stripped of their immunity by the state legislature and face personal liability for their malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance.

One other datum. She retired in 2017 and decamped to Arizona. Note, she held supervisory positions from 1999 to 2017, not grunt positions. See the pic of her: fat, no uniform, bad hair. She was 54 on the day she retired. I’ve read that Wisconsin has the most actuarially-sound public sector pension program in the nation. Sigh.

https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/09/09/reactions-to-bidens-covid-speech-on-vaccination-mandates/#comment-2576174

Note that this happened almost exactly 10 years ago.
Some people can’t tell fiction from reality, or threats from wit.

https://reason.com/2011/09/26/the-clear-and-present-danger-p/

James Miller, a theater professor at the University of Wisconsin in Stout, is a fan of Firefly, Joss Whedon’s short-lived science fiction series. Evidently Lisa A. Walter, the school’s chief of police, is not. After Miller put a Firefly poster on his office door, Walter removed it, perceiving it as a clear and present danger to public safety.

The poster shows Nathan Fillion as Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, captain of the spaceship at the center of Firefly. Superimposed over the image of Reynolds is a line he utters in the first episode: “You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake. You’ll be facing me. And you’ll be armed.” (This is Reynolds’ response to a question from a prospective passenger: “I’m trying to put this as delicately as I can…how do I know you won’t kill me in my sleep?”)

In a September 16 email message to Miller, Walter explained that “it is unacceptable to have postings such as this that refer to killing.” When Miller asked her to “respect my first amendment rights,” Walter claimed the poster was not covered by the First Amendment:
“Speech can be limited on a reasonable expectation that it will cause a material and/or substantial disruption of school activities and/or be constituted as a threat. We were notified of the existence of the posting, reviewed it and believe that the wording on the poster can be interpreted as a threat by others and/or could cause those that view it to believe that you are willing/able to carry out actions similar to what is listed. This posting can cause others to fear for their safety, thus it was removed.”

To protest Walter’s censorship, Miller put up an orange warning poster parody that shows the outline of a cop beating a prone man. “WARNING: FASCISM,” it says in big type. “Fascism can cause blunt trauma and/or violent death,” it continues in a box at the bottom. “Keep fascism away from children and pets.”

At this point Walter chuckled, seeing the error of her hasty decision, and apologetically returned Miller’s Firefly poster. Just kidding. She took down the new poster too, explaining her rationale in a September 20 email message:

Which said pretty much the same thing.
FIRE had to come in an’ ‘splain things to her.

https://www.thefire.org/fire-letter-to-uw-stout-chancellor-charles-w-sorensen-september-21-2011/

Miller’s flyers do not come at all close to meeting the legal definition of a “true threat” articulated by the Supreme Court in Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 359 (2003), in which the Court held that only “those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals” are outside the boundaries of First Amendment protection. It strains all credulity to think that any reasonable person would interpret Miller’s postings—one referencing a popular television program, the other satirically protesting UWS’s censorship—as signaling intent to carry out any act of violence.

Likewise, no reasonable person would expect either poster to be reasonably likely to lead to “material and/or substantial disruption.” UWS’s suggestion that campus community members are so impressionable and unreasonable that merely seeing a “refer[ence] to violence and/or harm” as depicted on the posters would lead to actual violence or to any material or substantial disruption is both shameful and absurd.

https://www.thefire.org/cases/university-of-wisconsin-stout-censorship-referral-to-threat-assessment-team-and-threat-of-criminal-charges-after-professor-puts-posters-outside-office-door/
CASE CLOSED

I sincerely hope not, but some people don’t react to gentle hints.
Something more like a 2×4 upside the head is necessary.

Would the Church close BYU & their other schools rather than yield to government decrees to violate God’s commandments?
In a heartbeat.

Would they first do everything possible to forestall that situation?
Absolutely.

As Not the Bee puts it, “What a time to be alive!”

More musket fire in the offing, I suspect.

AesopFan:

That’s a problem which has solutions. I refer you to Code Refactoring and Donald Knuth’s bug rewards:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check

Of course, solve one problem, create new ones.

Back in the human world, that’s the way it is and it’s often not depressing. An unemployed person gets a job — old problem solved, new problems arise, but usually better problems.

Tony Robbins jokes that his methods won’t free you from problems, but will give you a better class of problems to solve.

I complained about the Catholic Church, but in its time, and to a lesser extent still is, it was a remarkable solution to human problems. Which we are realizing now, as society moves beyond it.

As an ex-hippie/leftist/progressive I have thought long and hard about how those have gone as wrong as they have. But I don’t see them as intrinsically wrong and what we really need to do is get back to gingham dresses and powdered wigs. I see it as part of a longer song we are learning.

I don’t think the mission is to hold back entropy but to respond dynamically and improve, which entails making mistakes and dropping back before moving forward.

Bears a suspicious resemblance to updating computer programs: the number of bugs introduced exceeds by an order of magnitude the number of bugs fixed.

I refer back to my distinction between “good intentions” of sincere, motivated, progressive-in-the-true-sense teachers (aka classic liberals), and the “skinsuit” worn by most of their successors either by design or incompetence (entropy works on institutions as well as closed physical systems and the universe as a whole).

FWIW, my “vision” of god-hood is the holding back of universal entropy.

There is an ongoing battle between some of the faculty and students against the college administration and Church leadership.

Elder Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles lowered the boom recently (August 2021), beseeching the errant in a loving and impassioned speech to reconsider their interjection of politics into their teaching (while not enjoining their private beliefs, even though they are contrary to Church doctrine, although the hysterical reactions don’t mention that point).

Gentle hints over the last decade or so had limited effect, apparently. Those are reviewed in the ellipsis in the middle of the quoted section below, along with the topic under fire, and a precipitating cause for this present admonishment.

Video first, then a transcript, for those interested.

The transcript does not include Elder Holland’s introductory remarks (before 6:00), which were the best part, IMO. Then he talks about his nearly-lifelong love of and commitment to BYU, including his tenure as President, and gratitude for everyone who served, and serves there, and some of the personal experiences of those who attend and teach.

The “controversial” part starts around 15:23, and is only controversial if you don’t believe a church-sponsored school should be allowed to insist that its faculty, students, and employees abide by the doctrines of that religion, or at least not promulgate the contrary using the school as their platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg36L1989Ss&list=WL&index=155

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-holland/the-second-half-second-century-brigham-young-university/

Such are the experiences we hope to provide our students at BYU, though probably not always so poetically expressed. But imagine then the pain that comes with a memo like this one I recently received. These are just a half-dozen lines from a two-page document:

“You should know,” the writer said, “that some people in the extended community are feeling abandoned and betrayed by BYU. It seems that some professors (at least the vocal ones in the media) are supporting ideas that many of us feel are contradictory to gospel principles, making it appear to be about like any other university our sons and daughters could have attended. Several parents have said they no longer want to send their children here or donate to the school.

“Please don’t think I’m opposed to people thinking differently about policies and ideas,” the writer continued. “I’m not. But I would hope that BYU professors would be bridging those gaps between faith and intellect and would be sending out students who are ready to do the same in loving, intelligent, and articulate ways. Yet I fear that some faculty are not supportive of the Church’s doctrines and policies and choose to criticize them publicly. There are consequences to this. After having served a full-time mission and marrying her husband in the temple, a friend of mine recently left the Church. In her graduation statement on a social media post, she credited [such and such a BYU program and its faculty] with the radicalizing of her attitudes and the destruction of her faith.”7

Fortunately we don’t get too many of those letters, but this one isn’t unique. Several of my colleagues get the same kind, with almost all of them ultimately being forwarded to poor President Worthen. Now, most of what happens on this campus is absolutely wonderful. That is why I began as I did, with my own undying love of this place. But every so often we need a reminder of the challenge we constantly face here. Maybe it is in this meeting. I certainly remember my own experiences in these wonderful beginning-of-the-school-year meetings and how much it meant to me to be with you then. Well, it means that again today.

Here is something I said on this subject forty-one years ago, almost to the day. I was young. I was unprepared. I had been president for all of three weeks.

I said then and I say now that if we are an extension of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, taking a significant amount of sacred tithes and other precious human resources, all of which might well be expended in other worthy causes, surely our integrity demands that our lives “be absolutely consistent with and characteristic of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.”8 At a university there will always be healthy debate regarding a whole syllabus full of issues. But until “we all come [to] the unity of the faith, and . . . [have grown to] the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ,”9 our next best achievement will be to stay in harmony with the Lord’s anointed, those whom He has designated to declare Church doctrine and to guide Brigham Young University as its trustees.10
…(22:45)
My beloved brothers and sisters, “a house . . . divided against itself . . . cannot stand,”15 and I will go to my grave pleading that this institution not only stands but stands unquestionably committed to its unique academic mission and to the Church that sponsors it. We hope it isn’t a surprise to you that your trustees are not deaf or blind to the feelings that swirl around marriage and the whole same-sex topic on campus—and a lot of other topics. I and many of my Brethren have spent more time and shed more tears on this subject than we could ever adequately convey to you this morning or any morning. We have spent hours discussing what the doctrine of the Church can and cannot provide the individuals and families struggling over this difficult issue. So it is with a little scar tissue of our own that we are trying to avoid—and hope all will try to avoid—language, symbols, and situations that are more divisive than unifying at the very time we want to show love for all of God’s children.

If a student commandeers a graduation podium intended to represent everyone getting diplomas that day in order to announce his personal sexual orientation, what might another speaker feel free to announce the next year, until eventually anything goes? What might commencement come to mean—or not mean—if we push individual license over institutional dignity for very long? Do we simply end up with more divisiveness in our culture than we already have? And we already have far too much everywhere.

In that spirit, let me go no farther before declaring unequivocally my love and that of my Brethren for those who live with this same-sex challenge and so much complexity that goes with it. Too often the world has been unkind—in many instances crushingly cruel—to these, our ­brothers and sisters. Like many of you, we have spent hours with them, and we have wept and prayed and wept again in an effort to offer love and hope while keeping the gospel strong and the ­obedience to commandments evident in every individual life.

But it will assist all of us—it will assist ­everyone—trying to provide help in this ­matter if things can be kept in some proportion and balance in the process. For example, we have to be careful that love and empathy do not get interpreted as condoning and advocacy or that orthodoxy and loyalty to principle not be interpreted as unkindness or disloyalty to people. As near as I can tell, Christ never once withheld His love from anyone, but He also never once said to anyone, “Because I love you, you are exempt from keeping my commandments.” We are tasked with trying to strike that same sensitive, demanding balance in our lives.
…
My beloved friends, this kind of confusion and conflict ought not to be. Not here. There are better ways to move toward crucially important goals in these very difficult matters—ways that show empathy and understanding for everyone while maintaining loyalty to prophetic leadership and devotion to revealed doctrine.

My Brethren have made the case for the metaphor of musket fire, which I have endorsed yet again today. There will continue to be those who oppose our teachings—and with that will continue the need to define, document, and defend the faith. But we all look forward to the day when we can “beat [our] swords into plowshares, and [our] spears into pruninghooks” and, at least on this subject, “learn war [no] more.”16 And while I have focused on this same-sex topic this morning more than I would have liked, I pray you will see it as emblematic of a lot of issues our students, our communities, and our Church face in this complex, contemporary world of ours.

What if state legislators forced state colleges and universities to grant equal credit via examinations, with the education provided by the free market. Credits earned via examination could be mixed with those from sitting through the classes and would lead to the same degrees. This would create an explosion of free market providers of educational services and end the current abused monopoly status of academia.

Testing out of courses already exists but would be dramatically expanded.

The tests should not be pass/fail, but actually indicate the test score. The credentialing exams should also allow retaking, with higher grade points reflecting life experience and added study. To stop indoctrination, an appeals procedure staffed by volunteer alumni could allow review where other than multiple choice questions are part of the grade. Total transparency at the student’s option would be required.

Instead of creating generations so in debt that they have trouble starting families and buying their first houses, we could be creating generations who can train quickly for job opportunities in the high tech world of the future. It is time to open the provision of educational services to the free market in a truly meaningful way.

Historically I trace these things back to the Catholic Church and the inevitable, necessary reactions, such as the Enlightenment, to break free of Church’s straitjacket. And I say, thank God for that.

Of course, solve one problem, create new ones. That’s the way life works. I’d rather be living in the 21st Century than the 15th.

In the 5th grade I went from a wonderful, progressive elementary school in Marin County to a a nightmare parochial school in Florida in 6th grade. I know which I preferred.

I don’t believe we have fallen from a Golden Age of Education. I think education is a complex problem in a rapidly changing, complex society. I certainly don’t think we are handling it well today either.