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Melissa Click moments before she called for “muscle” to throw a reporter off University of Missouri property that protesters had claimed in November 2015
KTVI screenshot
Melissa Click, the former University of Missouri media professor who rose to infamy after her tirade against a reporter during a racial protest on the campus last fall, now believes that she was fired because she is white.
“This is all about racial politics. I’m a white lady; I’m an easy target,” Click told the Chronicle of Higher Education., according to the Daily Mail.
Click was fired in February after video of her actions during a campus protest in November went public. Black students who were tired of on-campus racism and a lack of adequate responses from school officials began protesting. The Missouri football team, who threatened to boycott their season if campus concerns about race were not addressed, supported the protesters.
During the protest, reporter Tim Tai, who was covering the incident for ESPN, refused to leave an area on the campus grounds where student protesters had set up shop. Student videographer Mark Schierbecker filmed the interaction and asked Click, “Can I speak to you?” the Daily Mail reports. Click sharply replied “no” and told him to “get out.”
Schierbecker refused to leave, and Click can be heard asking protesters, “Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here.”
The video went viral, amassing more than 2.7 million views, and Schierbecker filed a complaint with university police, according to the Daily Mail.
Subsequently, another video of Click surfaced showing her shouting and swearing at officers during a protest in October. As an officer attempted to remove Click from the road, she can be heard yelling, “Get your f–king hands off me.”
Before she was fired, some 100 state legislators had been demanding that she resign. Because the university believes that Click’s behavior justified her termination, she is unable to claim unemployment benefits and is currently unemployed, the Daily Mail reports. Click is appealing the university’s decision, but in the meantime, she has set up a GoFundMe page to pay for the fees, according to the Daily Mail. So far she has raised $13,457 of $38,000.
Read more at the Daily Mail.
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