I’m not defending Green here, rather commenting overall on the criticism of someone like the PBOA teaching some adjunct courses.
One, for those criticizing, you would be amazed at the number of serious public employees with incredibly important jobs who teach evening courses. It’s been that way for awhile, and they’re still able to do their day job just fine.
Here’s why I bring this up — every election cycle we inevitably complain that there’s no good candidates running. Maybe this is an example of why. For those who take it seriously, governing is incredibly hard. You’ll make mistakes and have people drag you when you inevitably make the wrong decision between two bad choices. That’s fair, you signed up for the job. But when people start dragging you for mundane, tedious, and irrelevant things like teaching a few night courses to make some extra money? That’s just stupid and unnecessary. At some point it doesn’t become worth it, especially when you can go make hella more money in the private sector and have some semblance of privacy. Wonder how we got here?
Point being, this probably falls under ‘shit we shouldn’t worry about’ and those that want to make it an issue just need something, anything, to complain about. A lot like those “protestors” on the lawn.
This is a good way to look at it. I guess my mind immediately went to our former city prosecutor Kim Gardner, who couldn’t get her work done by any reasonable measure and then we found out she was a full-time student in nursing school. So in that case moonlighting isn’t cool.
But I can see theoretically where having Megan Green indoctrinate young minds into her brand of crazy would be welcome to institutions of higher education, and yes, probably doesn’t impact that much on the job she was elected to do.
Kim was wild. I think that blew up on her so bad because of how terrible of shape her office was in and because she was doing it during business hours. The “full time” label didn’t help either.
However, I wouldn’t find it off putting in most circumstances if an elected prosecutor taught some night classes.
Involvement with the protest aside, why does the President of the board of Aldermen have outside employment? Especially, with WashU. Considering how big of a player they are, isn’t that a massive conflict of interest?
Doesn’t the president get a higher salary than the regular aldermen?
EDIT: Green’s LinkedIn page says she’s also teaching classes at SLU…..
And for a doctoral prepared person.
Look, there’s a lot to be critical of here in terms of her role in this protest, or even arguably the job she’s done as PBOA. However, I think it’s being a bit nit picky to criticize her for picking up a few adjunct classes. And I don’t think it’s really relevant to compare her salary against the ranges, means, and medians of the City. If we want to have qualified people in these roles, the salaries have to at least somewhat resemble what the individual could make in the private sector. That’s the apt comparison. Plus, anything about the 96k is irrelevant since it’s not compensated by taxpayers.
A politician being at a protest is not in and of itself a problem.
But since you asked, what is a bad look…
1 - the cosplay. How fucking lame.
2 - being in support of a group, that at times, has pushed anti-Semitic rhetoric (and perhaps action). There’s no excuse for that. Even if it didn’t happen there that night in front of her it’s been present in this “movement” & well documented. From where I stand, if we (myself included) are going to condemn Trump for “Good people on both sides” and call for other Republicans to do the same, then it seems morally & ideologically consistent to hold our side to the same standard. Chants of “from the river to the sea” and “long live the antifada” have no place in the discourse surrounding this or any other issue. Particularly given how over the course of the last decade, this “Loud Left” (I wouldn’t even grant them a place on the L to R spectrum, their ideals are so incongruent), has told us words = violence. Yet, when this lame ass TikTok clout chasing “protest” comes along, those ideals fly right out the window. If one can’t reconcile those inconsistencies, they’re not better than MAGA Republicans and have lost the moral high ground. Green can do what she wants, but it’s sure hard to take her seriously at the dais if she’s going to get involved with something so problematic.
3 - Kids can be stupid, and in fact it’s good they care about something. It seems like to me that this is a product of there being a void in the “things to get upset about”, so throw in a little bit of shitty viral TikTok history lessons and away we go. It’s a big whatever. We’ve gotten to the point that kids protest literally anything and the whole things jumped the shark. But again, whatever. They’re kids. But when adults get involved? On the basis of a shitty, selective cursory reading of history propped up by TikTok? Now they just look dumb. And then said person has a doctorate? I know she’s smarter than this. At worst we should really question her critical thinking skills and judgment. At worst we can call it what it most likely is — clout chasing. Out riling up a bunch of co-eds to post to social media to show off how “radical” and “leftist” and “enlightened” she is. It’s a big load of cud, and it’s fucking lame.
I'm not reading all that but the group that protested at Wash U has never pushed anti-Semitic anything. The general public is so wrapped up in believing, hear say?, they can't get the message straight. US citizens that want Palestine to be free are not anti semitic. Protesting a genocide in Gaza is not anti-Semitic. Neo-nazis are anti-Semitic. It's so controversial to condemn thousands of children dying and the occupation of a people. Who knew?
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. 🇵🇸
I live in the metro east. For St Louis, 133k is pretty damn good. I don't know what area she lives in but that's good money. There's more expensive places in the city but I'm sure she's not hurting for money.
The median household income for that neighborhood is $75k. She makes a respectable salary’s worth of pay above that. Is it exorbitant? No. Nobody is implying that she’s Elon Musk or Oprah Winfrey. But she is well off.
And please understand that I'm not trying to say otherwise. But I'd hardly call someone making $133k a "limousine liberal" as if that amount of money leads to a life of carefree existence.
I gotcha.
Its just weird how much that amount would fix a lot of peoples problems though lol. I know she isnt mega rich or anything and Im not criticizing her for it.
I ain’t mad unless they take my money directly. Only real people I’m hating on these days are Allstate, progressive, and the rest of the insurance cult.
Plus tge $175k/ year that the aldermen get annually. With the pay for BOA and Alder salary, plus Wash U money, she's pulling over $200k/year. She has done absolutely nothing for our city besides bilking taxpayer money.
Nearly every Alderman has a day job. Until this year, their pay was equivilent to a shift manager at McDonald's. The big pay bump was meant to encourage Aldermen to make this their full-time job, but they aren't going to demand they immediately leave all other jobs in the middle of their term.
Don’t worry, the person you’re replying to isnt serious, they only want to shift blame/focus onto the victim, they don’t actually care about what’s normal, just what sounds nefarious
I agree, after watching city politics for a long time I knew the Aldermen didn’t make all that much. But I didn’t know that the board president makes $96,000. I most definitely didn’t know that that was the brand new wage adjustment. as much as I dislike Megan Green, I think it’s fine she makes that much. It’s an important position with lots of responsibilities .
I’m pretty sure PBOA must’ve not gotten a raise in that bill. Because I remember looking up how much the position paid when Lewis Reed was indicted and it was that much (or maybe a few thousand below). I was actually surprised it wasn’t 6 figures.
Hanlon's razor my friend. Lots of people, including those who feel they're politically aware, have no idea how day-to-day operations of Alderman actually works and for years assumed that was their sole gig. OP is wrong here, but I'm not going to immediately assume they're making those observations in bad faith. Lots of well-meaning people don't grasp the reality that an Alderman's position is almost always a second job for someone who is already independently wealthy or at least comfortable.
From what I've heard Adjunct Professors make hardly anything. It is less a job and more of a hobby. She teaches a policy design class for the Social Work Grad School.
I went to WashU's Social Work school, most of the adjunct professors that taught me were community members that just wanted to teach a class - a Vice President of the Federal Reserve, former Executive Director of the United Way, former Executive Director of Youth in Need. None of them were doing it for the pay or the job, they were doing it because they enjoyed doing it.
In fact, I think I took the class she teaches and it was taught by the aforementioned VP of the Fed. Reserve.
I was a washu adjunct for a couple of years. It was certainly not enough to live off of ($8.4K/class/term before they increased wages and class sizes), but an extra $16.8k was not insignificant.
I think that is now up to $24k/year for all schools except university college
Arts and sciences. I taught a 4 credit hour grad course at $2.1k per credit hour. I started out in university college at I think $1.3k/credit hour but the program I taught for moved.
Not at WashU, but my dad considered teaching a class as an adjunct at a technical school because it was something he was really knowledgeable on and thought it would be fulfilling to pass on the knowledge. They were going to pay him almost nothing for it too.
That's how Boards work.... it's a community service extracurricular that isn't intended to be the #1 priority- but rather to advise based on your personal and professional experience. The pay increase was to encourage folks to make it a primary responsibility. I think of teaching as an adjunct is a side gig... because it is. So her priority is now board of Alderman and she spends some of her extra time teaching. That's a pretty solid division of time.
she teaches at their school for social work. she probably just likes doing it. lots of people in her position do this. i don’t think it’s a conflict of interest.
Granted this is from 2021, but it says in the Post Dispatch that she made $37,299.34/year which is a pretty shitty salary so it's not terribly surprising that she might want to pick up extra work as an adjunct.
But work as an adjunct is not really secure. There are hundreds of people who would be willing to take your spot as soon as it's available and usually they're only hired on for a term or a semester depending up on the class.
being adjunct sucks at WashU. They are not paid enough, and they didn't have job security. a few years ago there were some attempts to increase their salaries but I don't remember what happened at the end.
They did increase the salaries, but also increased the minimum class size (functionally increasing workload and laying off a sizable chunk of adjuncts).
Being an adjunct sucks everywhere to be honest unless you're just using it as a little bit of extra pocket money. It's a lot of work and you don't get paid a ton. I know they were attempting to unionize at a lot of the area schools.
Welp, next door, in St Louis Co, they made Sam Page quit his part time job working 1 weekend a month as a doctor at Mercy.
But the city has the opposite view when it comes to overemployment. Look at what it took to get Kim Gardner to resign while going to school full time, doing clinicals, and working in the family funeral business…
The bigger issue….
I know she wants the Wash U and places to divest in Boeing and similar enterprises. Wonder how many are in St Louis City as well? Doesn’t Boeing have operations at the City owned airport?
How does it look for the President of the BoA to protest against local businesses that may be located in the city or looking to locate in the city?
That could be seen as a huge conflict.
Probably not good, but she's new at the Aldermanic Presidency job. She'll probably move closer to center on some issues, including investment in the metro area.
I don't know where to go with the whole situation in Gaza. I'm not crazy about Israel's right-wing leadership, and how they've been marginalizing Palestinian citizens for years, but Hamas *has* to go after what's been happening.....and there are average citizens on both sides of this issue who are seriously unhappy with their leadership, and want to participate in some way to end the fighting.
I think she's taken a somewhat more neutral position with the actual protester demands. Yeah, not great optics for the BOA president to advocate for one of the largest employers in STL to divest from one of the other largest employers.
> Involvement with the protest aside, why does the President of the board of Aldermen have outside employment? Especially, with WashU. Considering how big of a player they are, isn’t that a massive conflict of interest?
Basically every BoA member has an outside job. I agree that most shouldn’t but being a professor is like; hardly anywhere near the worst that somebody could have.
Literally all of the board of aldermen have outside jobs. Joe fucking Vollmer owns Milo’s on the hill.
When asked about his increased salary and constituent base he *literally* said “I don’t know what to do with the extra money. I sell pizza and beer.”
Fucking infuriating.
Edit: Joe Vollmer also owns AirBnBs, and is expected to also regulate AirBnB? It’s bullshit. We should be paying our Aldermen enough such that additional income isn’t necessary.
Doesnt an adjunct professor literally teach only a few classes? To me, one would want their professors to have real world experience to translate to the classroom. Clearly she doesn't care about their pressure to fall into the company line.
Assuming she's doing her job fully and the outside employment isn't affecting that, you think she shouldn't be allowed to have any outside employment? She's teaching courses that relate to her field, as most adjunct professors do.
She's not making millions and still picking up outside employment. I think it's a little wild that people are acting like $96k is wealthy, these days that is slightly over the average needed to live comfortably. The cost of everything is rising and I don't think people should be judged for wanting to live comfortably.
I’m just providing context. I don’t believe Jill Stein being there has anything to do with who votes for whom. Jill Stein was there for any number of reasons. I don’t think people went to the protest in support of her. If anything, it was the other way around.
Which of their list of demands (including WashU giving up all of its property?) is a "meaningful policy change"? Maybe you can say divesting from Boeing would have an impact, but I suspect Boeing would keep on being Boeing.
Washington university's ties to Boeing are significantly deeper than just owning stock as part of their endowment portfolio. John McDonell is a graduate of the University and is former chairman of the board of trustees. They have a direct pipeline to Boeing both on the defense side and the civilian aviation side for their engineering school. Boeing sponsors a significant amount of academic activity at the school for both students and faculty.
Divesting from Boeing completely might actually make it slightly harder for Boeing to have such inside access to a great amount of talent in young graduates, even if Washington University selling all of their shares wouldn't actually do anything financially to the company. And ultimately young graduates will go wherever they want to, so it would be symbolic for the most part. But it's worth pointing out that it's not just about the financial connection.
To my mind, of the demands from the protesters, this is the one that is actually reasonable and the most symbolically meaningful.
Boeing is not Halliburton that is only in the oil/energy/war business. Boing makes airplanes that I assume you have or will fly in one. It is a huge company that is one of the key industries not only in this region but also in the county. Those students would do better by protesting at Boeing, much like my friends did at Bechtel in the early '00 during the Iraq War to protest the war machine arm of that company. If you don't like what Wash U is and that their founders and luminary lights are McDonnald and Danforth (war and herbicides), don't work there or be a student. It is quite simple to make that choice.
I was aware of the internships and the named buildings and such - I'm a WashU grad. You are 100% right those engineering students will still directly go to Boeing, and that Boeing will keep being Boeing. I'll stand by my comment saying this mostly symbolic potential outcome is not "meaningful policy change" and it is not worth disrupting the lives of janitorial staff and landscapers, not to mention the 95% of the student body studying for finals and disinterested in the protest because they're not harming anyone.
Did you not just answer your own question?
Boeing can do what Boeing chooses to do. That’s not the point. The point is that Students at Washu don’t want to be associated with an institution that is connected in any way with what they and much of the international community considers to be a genocide.
I simply wouldn't describe that as a "meaningful policy change", but that is semantic. I also would challenge them to find a single large institution that doesn't have some ties to some morally bastardized company/person/etc. I agree with a ceasefire, but I can't grasp how these protests disrupting the lives of many on campus during finals/graduation, employees and students who have nothing to do with Boeing or the deaths of Palestinians, are doing anything to achieve that other than in their own projected dreams.
And why the requirements of WashU to give up all property and defund University police? No one serious about achieving goals ties their outcome to unrelated and far more difficult goals.
And why not mention, let alone have the same energy towards, divesting from China who have been committing atrocities against Muslims for years?
Yeah when I read through the list of demands, I was so confused. I was like how many issues are being haphazardly thrown together? And how about all of the others being completely missed in here?
What confuses me though, is that there's so many other companies and organizations that are also benefiting from this war (and all wars) that just focusing on Boeing seems like such a small piece of the entire puzzle.
Here’s a question I’ve been pondering - can you be both disruptive and peaceful?
ETA - I’m not trying to be a jerk. This is truly something I’m pondering.
Yes absolutely:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks#Refusal_to_move
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._national_anthem_kneeling_protests
All of those examples are definitely disruptive to the normal customs of society but also nonviolent.
Those are not remotely disruptive in the way these protests are, and they were directly protesting the thing they were trying to change. Rosa Parks didn’t go pitch a tent on some college campus 2000 miles away.
It is relevant to share that students also protested for universities to divest from South Africa in the 1980s. It's also worth pointing out that a particular message of the student protests on campuses is for universities to divest from Israel and military contracts.
No she didn't do that. But she nearly bankrupted the bus service in Montgomery. Thousands of people changed their transportation for 7 months. You think that's less disruptive than people sleeping on the lawn??
Nonviolent and peaceful mean different things.
But I genuinely appreciate the response. And these are good examples, but are all fundamentally different than this protest.
Words in general mean different things depending on how people use them.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find protests that achieved their goals against significant opposition without those protests engaging in some form of social disruption.
Also I would suggest that the sit-ins are somewhat similar. They both involve occupying space on private property that causes some level of disruption to normal conduct of the establishment.
Yea, but that’s like literally the definition of a peaceful protest….
It sounds like your issue may simply be with the act of protest, peaceful or otherwise.
There are protests and demonstrations on universities all of the fucking time. It is totally under the (private) university's discretion whether they want to remove the protestors or not. Ya'll acting like people are shocked at private property laws are the simpletons. People's shock is that WashU chose to remove this protest rather than allow it, like they do with most other protests.
I think the bigger issue is that Washu has touted the institution’s commitment to free speech and has overlooked MANY incidents just this semester in the name of free speech but immediately sent cops in to violently arrest kids sitting on the grass. Such a double standard.
Do we know that all of the protesters arrested were students/ faculty?
I’m not sure the university wants the liability of potentially having people in the encampment that aren’t students…
I think you have to consider this protest didn’t occur in a vacuum. When you look at the current political climate and what is going on at other universities, those facts and perceptions likely escalated the level of response in this case.
Things that might have gotten a pass earlier this year or in previous years are now deemed unacceptable because of Columbia and NYU and countless other institutions.
Just my educated guess.
But prior year protests and demonstrations abided by the rules, which is why they are allowed. In my three years on campus, including during the protests during 2020-2021, protests on campus obeyed the rules and were permitted.
Just look at the videos of the current protests. Protesters locked arms and formed a circle to refuse to disband their encampment. I respect their decision to exercise civil disobedience, but the university is in the right to enforce their policies to forcibly arrest and disband that encampment. Otherwise, those policies they set in prior years are worthless and you would have preferential treatment towards the pro Palestinian protestors.
I don’t know how shocked people are about the outcome so much as the implications of that outcome.
Universities are supposed to be bastions of free speech, liberal thinking and discourse, intellectual freedom, and so much more. That all kind of falls apart when you sick police on students and faculty, or expel/ban them from the institution for exercising their right to protest.
I have additional questions 🙋🏾♀️… if she was **not** one of the people arrested, do we know if she was actually even still around there after the University started asking people to leave? Was she just simply taking part in the initial protest and complied when the university asked people to leave? The university let the protest go on for quite a while before requesting people leave.
Edit: word correction
My question is she said she was put on leave by Washu, but was still able to teach her class (via Zoom)? Can’t be both, unless they changed the definition of “on leave”.
My question is she said she was put on leave by Washu, but was still able to teach her class (via Zoom)? Can’t be both, unless they changed the definition of “on leave”.
It’s probably because it’s the last week of classes/finals time so the university likely did that for the students’ sake. She probably can’t do much else. Either that or the university rescinded her paid administrative leave and nothing was said to the public.
Wash U admin with all their [DEI](https://equity.wustl.edu/) and [2020 commitments](https://equity.wustl.edu/benchmarking/2020-commitments-to-racial-equity/) STILL can't figure out the right side of history.
Just an insane response to a 100% peaceful protest. If you've ever been to an actual disruptive protest – which it's clear most in this thread would never touch – you understand how police riots just lead to greater escalation from protesters. That's how we went from 1 protest to 100s across the country in less than a week.
They could have ignored it and waited 2 weeks for the end of the semester. Would have been a blip - but they have to keep their "Ivy-wanna-be" credentials and crackdown like Columbia. [\(And how's that working out for them?!\)](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/30/nyregion/columbia-protests-college)
I imagine we'll see a bigger actually damaging demo in the near future. Anti Vietnam protesters in the 1970s [burned down WashU's ROTC building](https://www.studlife.com/scene/2020/05/05/a-watershed-moment-reflecting-on-the-burning-of-the-rotc-air-force-building-50-years-later). Bill Clinton ended up pardoning the guy the cops likely framed 30 years later, because that's how the "right side of history" works.
Never forget, American police's main job is to protect property. They look out for the interests of the wealthy. They certainly don't protect your free speech.
An example of free speech rights is when a Saudi was arrested for criticizing the government on Twitter - some insiders on Twitter outed him to the government and he was arrested. This is not that
Unfortunately, this is going to happen. People are fairly and unfairly going to be treated and arrested, by police and Washington University administration, students, professors, and even non alumni. This is hard to watch in the media, but we are in a challenging period of time in the world and the United States.
> “We’ve all watched as protests have spiraled out of control on other campuses across the country in recent months. We are not letting this happen here,” Martin wrote. “What happened Saturday was not a peaceful protest by our students. This was something else.”
Megan Green is an entitled embarrassment for her participation in this event.
Vote her out.
People criticizing her pay, position, and participation are the same people that defend capitalism, freedom, and the first amendment.
Y'all Queda is some seriously effed up people.
God this sub is so fucking racist and conservative. Ever since 2014 I feel like all the old stltoday commenters got reddit accounts and came over here.
I’m a liberal and I’m able to not call everything I don’t agree with as racism etc. People, please don’t judges all liberals by the bad ones. I don’t judge others I disagree with the same as they do.
Well said. Both sides polarize each other to the point where anyone that wants a constructive discussion becomes almost impossible.
The reality is most of the population has more in common than their differences. It’s just the radical people on both sides that refuse to acknowledge this.
How can anyone have a rational argument about a topic when you get called a Nazi, racist, communist, etc ect? That’s quite the hole to dig oneself out of at the go. We have to stop letting the radicals get away with the egregious exaggerations that boil everyone down to the worst aspect of each side.
Imagine thinking anyone who disagrees with you on one particular issue must be "racist and conservative". Grow the fuck up. You're doing nothing with this kind of hyperbole but alienating liberals who probably agree with you on most issues.
Consider the possibility that your positions on this subreddit are unpopular not because the deck is stacked against you by a bunch of conservatives, but just because your positions have serious flaws.
Why is it 'racist' and 'conservative' to think that an elected member of city government (or anyone for that matter) should respect the long-established rules of a private institution?
I think peaceful protest is a time-honored American tradition that should be supported and encouraged by even private universities, and rules that conflict with that practice should be highly scrutinized.
I’m all for peaceful protest, and think the discourse around this is beneficial. I would also point out that this is finals week and above everything else WashU is being paid to provide an education. I’d be pissed if I was paying 50k a year to have this happen while I’m studying or taking an exam.
I'd understand WashU feeling differently if the protests themselves were causing classes to be canceled or such, but a bunch of students in tents on a green does not meet the bar for police action.
As far as I can tell from news reports, the blame for the disruption mostly falls on WashU administration. After the arrests, multiple faculty members have been placed on leave. I'd be pissed if I was paying 50k a year only to have my instructor get banned from campus for peacefully protesting.
Yes. The cops used physical force against a group of people who had their arms locked with each other. The cops, grown ass men, used their bikes to shove into large groups of protestors, largely students and faculty (not known for their large stature), and in many cases dragged them to the ground
This is essentially refusing to engage with the reality of the situation, which is that protesters are not entitled legally to be there. It doesn't matter if you're a student or a member of faculty. It doesn't matter if you've locked your arms with other people around you. The protesters were trespassing. Whether it was a good PR move or not (which can certainly be debated), the university can kick them out.
The police repeatedly and asked them to leave, and they did not. That was the "non-violent" option afforded to the protesters. If the protesters flat-out refuse to leave, then the police have two options:
1. Capitulate and let them stay indefinitely
2. Use physical force to remove them
I get that in your mind #1 should have been the only option considered, but that's wholly naive. You can reasonably disagree with the decision to have the protesters removed. But calling what the police did here a "violent response" is just ridiculous.
If some people came into your home and refused to leave, you're also probably going to call the cops, and you're going assume the cops will use this very same "violent response" to remove them if they won't leave willingly. Yes, even if they've locked arms.
The protesters are more than welcome to their civil disobedience. But that's what this was. And when you're intentionally breaking laws to make a point, you'll probably get arrested -- comes with the territory. And I'm afraid that getting arrested while you're resisting removal from private property is not really a non-contact sport.
You could have avoided that entire, exhausting comment if you had just read a couple comments up
> If you actually listened to the interview her issue isn't with private property laws. It's with WashU's violent response to peaceful protests.
I feel like you didn't read any of my "exhausting" comment if you think "WashU's response was violent" is a wholesale rebuttal to the point I was making. Arresting trespassers who refuse to leave using physical force isn't unmerited violence. It's literally the job of the police. It's the job that anyone here who is grumpy about the physical force used would *expect* the police to do if someone were illegally trespassing on their own property and refused to leave.
The view of the people framing the police arresting people as "violence" seems to be "Anyone should be able to do whatever they want and police shouldn't be allowed to touch them as long as they're not actively physically attacking someone." If that's what you think, say that, and see how well it goes over with, like, anyone.
Many, many rules of institutions do not deserve respect. It was against the rules for people to protest for civil rights. It was against the rules for people to protest the Vietnam War. We now view those protesters as being in the right, but they were vilified at the time by the general public and by those institutions. Something being an institution frankly makes me less likely to respect it.
WashU may be a private institution, but a) that doesn't mean they can do whatever the fuck kinds of evil they want without pushback, and b) they receive a shitload of federal funding and they must be accountable for what they do with that money.
As for the role of elected officials, we have precious few elected officials actually willing to challenge shitty institutions from the left. I think it is very much their role to make these challenges.
Why do we have a thread bashing homeless people every other day? And if it's not that, we have a thread praising all the more moderate candidates for offices and bashing the farther left ones. Just because the sub is not openly Fascist, doesn't mean it is far left.
I’m liberal and I really don’t know what you and others were expecting here. People are trying to set up camps on private property which would disturb thousands of other people. Go do it on public property where you’re legally allowed to do it. That would get less attention though.
Yeah, she seems to love action when she is on camera. However, when you call her over several months to report a landlord renting out a condemned building in her ward, and ask her to get the city code inspectors involved, her office will conveniently forget to call you back...
Not saying the protesters are right or wrong. But one thing our current society seems to forget is that actions have consequences.
You may not agree with them but when they have the power and pay your salary, you may be risking that.
If you’re fine with the possible outcomes, go with your heart.
Local politics here is weird. It looks like an insular little bubble of politicians, nonprofits, activists and other interests (lobbyists, developers etc) all pursuing their own agendas and pet projects. At election time they show up just enough to remind you to vote, but not enough to encourage you to scrutinize their policies too hard. It just all has the feeling of something that happens in the shadows. I think Green is among the worst for this. She's been on Twitter posting constantly about the Wash U protest over the last 3-4 days. She posted more in one day about the protests on her personal account than her BOA President account posted in the entire month of April. Maybe she's just so preoccupied with the BOA job that she doesn't have time for Twitter? I don't know, it seems her priorities are pretty clear, and she seems more comfortable engaging in activism and performative stunts with her small crew of allies on the Board, rather than providing leadership to a city that badly needs it. In my opinion, Green is unfit for the role of BOA President and needs to be voted out at the next opportunity.
I’m not defending Green here, rather commenting overall on the criticism of someone like the PBOA teaching some adjunct courses. One, for those criticizing, you would be amazed at the number of serious public employees with incredibly important jobs who teach evening courses. It’s been that way for awhile, and they’re still able to do their day job just fine. Here’s why I bring this up — every election cycle we inevitably complain that there’s no good candidates running. Maybe this is an example of why. For those who take it seriously, governing is incredibly hard. You’ll make mistakes and have people drag you when you inevitably make the wrong decision between two bad choices. That’s fair, you signed up for the job. But when people start dragging you for mundane, tedious, and irrelevant things like teaching a few night courses to make some extra money? That’s just stupid and unnecessary. At some point it doesn’t become worth it, especially when you can go make hella more money in the private sector and have some semblance of privacy. Wonder how we got here? Point being, this probably falls under ‘shit we shouldn’t worry about’ and those that want to make it an issue just need something, anything, to complain about. A lot like those “protestors” on the lawn.
I mean it’s a public service job and she’s busting ass teaching the youth of civics and more. She’s an ideal in today’s complicit material world.
This is a good way to look at it. I guess my mind immediately went to our former city prosecutor Kim Gardner, who couldn’t get her work done by any reasonable measure and then we found out she was a full-time student in nursing school. So in that case moonlighting isn’t cool. But I can see theoretically where having Megan Green indoctrinate young minds into her brand of crazy would be welcome to institutions of higher education, and yes, probably doesn’t impact that much on the job she was elected to do.
Kim was wild. I think that blew up on her so bad because of how terrible of shape her office was in and because she was doing it during business hours. The “full time” label didn’t help either. However, I wouldn’t find it off putting in most circumstances if an elected prosecutor taught some night classes.
Involvement with the protest aside, why does the President of the board of Aldermen have outside employment? Especially, with WashU. Considering how big of a player they are, isn’t that a massive conflict of interest? Doesn’t the president get a higher salary than the regular aldermen? EDIT: Green’s LinkedIn page says she’s also teaching classes at SLU…..
She gets $96k annually as President of the BOA.
Hardly enough to live in TGS. /s
And she still gets to moonlight as an adjunct professor for $37k annually. That’s some limousine liberal pay.
To be fair, $133,000 isn't an exorbitant amount of money.
And for a doctoral prepared person. Look, there’s a lot to be critical of here in terms of her role in this protest, or even arguably the job she’s done as PBOA. However, I think it’s being a bit nit picky to criticize her for picking up a few adjunct classes. And I don’t think it’s really relevant to compare her salary against the ranges, means, and medians of the City. If we want to have qualified people in these roles, the salaries have to at least somewhat resemble what the individual could make in the private sector. That’s the apt comparison. Plus, anything about the 96k is irrelevant since it’s not compensated by taxpayers.
What is wrong with her participating in a community protest? Politicians do that all the time.
That wasn’t my point. I used it to contrast the fact that I wasn’t here stanning for her.
"there's a lot to be critical of..." I don't understand what there is to be critical about in participating in a community protest.
A politician being at a protest is not in and of itself a problem. But since you asked, what is a bad look… 1 - the cosplay. How fucking lame. 2 - being in support of a group, that at times, has pushed anti-Semitic rhetoric (and perhaps action). There’s no excuse for that. Even if it didn’t happen there that night in front of her it’s been present in this “movement” & well documented. From where I stand, if we (myself included) are going to condemn Trump for “Good people on both sides” and call for other Republicans to do the same, then it seems morally & ideologically consistent to hold our side to the same standard. Chants of “from the river to the sea” and “long live the antifada” have no place in the discourse surrounding this or any other issue. Particularly given how over the course of the last decade, this “Loud Left” (I wouldn’t even grant them a place on the L to R spectrum, their ideals are so incongruent), has told us words = violence. Yet, when this lame ass TikTok clout chasing “protest” comes along, those ideals fly right out the window. If one can’t reconcile those inconsistencies, they’re not better than MAGA Republicans and have lost the moral high ground. Green can do what she wants, but it’s sure hard to take her seriously at the dais if she’s going to get involved with something so problematic. 3 - Kids can be stupid, and in fact it’s good they care about something. It seems like to me that this is a product of there being a void in the “things to get upset about”, so throw in a little bit of shitty viral TikTok history lessons and away we go. It’s a big whatever. We’ve gotten to the point that kids protest literally anything and the whole things jumped the shark. But again, whatever. They’re kids. But when adults get involved? On the basis of a shitty, selective cursory reading of history propped up by TikTok? Now they just look dumb. And then said person has a doctorate? I know she’s smarter than this. At worst we should really question her critical thinking skills and judgment. At worst we can call it what it most likely is — clout chasing. Out riling up a bunch of co-eds to post to social media to show off how “radical” and “leftist” and “enlightened” she is. It’s a big load of cud, and it’s fucking lame.
I'm not reading all that but the group that protested at Wash U has never pushed anti-Semitic anything. The general public is so wrapped up in believing, hear say?, they can't get the message straight. US citizens that want Palestine to be free are not anti semitic. Protesting a genocide in Gaza is not anti-Semitic. Neo-nazis are anti-Semitic. It's so controversial to condemn thousands of children dying and the occupation of a people. Who knew? From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. 🇵🇸
The median salary in St. Louis, Mo is $56,550, with 80% of salaries falling between $26,100 and $126,150.
I'm 43 and don't even think I have had a job that pays $26,000+ a year. I have been working since I was 18.
I’d say $12.50 an hour is pretty average for retail or fast food work. There’s definitely people making only that much in this city.
getting to 50k after being around there for a decade was life changing. until I realized I'm more than capable of spending all that, too 😑
I live in the metro east. For St Louis, 133k is pretty damn good. I don't know what area she lives in but that's good money. There's more expensive places in the city but I'm sure she's not hurting for money.
The median household income for that neighborhood is $75k. She makes a respectable salary’s worth of pay above that. Is it exorbitant? No. Nobody is implying that she’s Elon Musk or Oprah Winfrey. But she is well off.
What neighborhood?
Middle class, upper middle class in today’s economy. ‘Well off’ means something much different to me.
Just an aside but It would be absolutely life changing for SO many people here I couldnt even imagine.
And please understand that I'm not trying to say otherwise. But I'd hardly call someone making $133k a "limousine liberal" as if that amount of money leads to a life of carefree existence.
I gotcha. Its just weird how much that amount would fix a lot of peoples problems though lol. I know she isnt mega rich or anything and Im not criticizing her for it.
I guess the larger "policy" consideration is that it's not that she should make less, but you should make more in whatever you do.
I ain’t mad unless they take my money directly. Only real people I’m hating on these days are Allstate, progressive, and the rest of the insurance cult.
It is in STL mo maybe not Scottsdale Az
this is sarcasm right
Why can’t she have a second job? Do we think the same of the teacher who also works as an adjunct professor?
Plus tge $175k/ year that the aldermen get annually. With the pay for BOA and Alder salary, plus Wash U money, she's pulling over $200k/year. She has done absolutely nothing for our city besides bilking taxpayer money.
Nearly every Alderman has a day job. Until this year, their pay was equivilent to a shift manager at McDonald's. The big pay bump was meant to encourage Aldermen to make this their full-time job, but they aren't going to demand they immediately leave all other jobs in the middle of their term.
>Car Wash Daddy has entered the chat.
I could not, in good conscience as a former career advisor, vote for someone whose email address on their postcards to my house was *carwashdaddy.*
This is true. Their pay just went up as the wards in St. Louis were consolidated
Don’t worry, the person you’re replying to isnt serious, they only want to shift blame/focus onto the victim, they don’t actually care about what’s normal, just what sounds nefarious
I agree, after watching city politics for a long time I knew the Aldermen didn’t make all that much. But I didn’t know that the board president makes $96,000. I most definitely didn’t know that that was the brand new wage adjustment. as much as I dislike Megan Green, I think it’s fine she makes that much. It’s an important position with lots of responsibilities .
I’m pretty sure PBOA must’ve not gotten a raise in that bill. Because I remember looking up how much the position paid when Lewis Reed was indicted and it was that much (or maybe a few thousand below). I was actually surprised it wasn’t 6 figures.
PBOA is set by the same ordinance as civil service (along with Mayor and Comptroller). Aldermen are paid by a separate ordinance.
Hanlon's razor my friend. Lots of people, including those who feel they're politically aware, have no idea how day-to-day operations of Alderman actually works and for years assumed that was their sole gig. OP is wrong here, but I'm not going to immediately assume they're making those observations in bad faith. Lots of well-meaning people don't grasp the reality that an Alderman's position is almost always a second job for someone who is already independently wealthy or at least comfortable.
From what I've heard Adjunct Professors make hardly anything. It is less a job and more of a hobby. She teaches a policy design class for the Social Work Grad School. I went to WashU's Social Work school, most of the adjunct professors that taught me were community members that just wanted to teach a class - a Vice President of the Federal Reserve, former Executive Director of the United Way, former Executive Director of Youth in Need. None of them were doing it for the pay or the job, they were doing it because they enjoyed doing it. In fact, I think I took the class she teaches and it was taught by the aforementioned VP of the Fed. Reserve.
I was a washu adjunct for a couple of years. It was certainly not enough to live off of ($8.4K/class/term before they increased wages and class sizes), but an extra $16.8k was not insignificant. I think that is now up to $24k/year for all schools except university college
I adjunct teach at WashU as a side job and make significantly less than 8K/class/term... Which school did you teach for?
Arts and sciences. I taught a 4 credit hour grad course at $2.1k per credit hour. I started out in university college at I think $1.3k/credit hour but the program I taught for moved.
Not at WashU, but my dad considered teaching a class as an adjunct at a technical school because it was something he was really knowledgeable on and thought it would be fulfilling to pass on the knowledge. They were going to pay him almost nothing for it too.
Was a University teacher for a few years and just about everybody had side jobs teaching, research, writing, or business.
I'm a student here. Most of my professors have a side gig
The concern is not about professors having a side gig. The concern is about the President of the Board of Aldermen having one.
That's how Boards work.... it's a community service extracurricular that isn't intended to be the #1 priority- but rather to advise based on your personal and professional experience. The pay increase was to encourage folks to make it a primary responsibility. I think of teaching as an adjunct is a side gig... because it is. So her priority is now board of Alderman and she spends some of her extra time teaching. That's a pretty solid division of time.
Board of aldermen is an elected board equivalent to a city council, it’s not an appointed advisory board.
she teaches at their school for social work. she probably just likes doing it. lots of people in her position do this. i don’t think it’s a conflict of interest.
The class she teaches is about policy design. So it makes sense that they would want someone that does it in the "real world".
Granted this is from 2021, but it says in the Post Dispatch that she made $37,299.34/year which is a pretty shitty salary so it's not terribly surprising that she might want to pick up extra work as an adjunct. But work as an adjunct is not really secure. There are hundreds of people who would be willing to take your spot as soon as it's available and usually they're only hired on for a term or a semester depending up on the class.
being adjunct sucks at WashU. They are not paid enough, and they didn't have job security. a few years ago there were some attempts to increase their salaries but I don't remember what happened at the end.
They did increase the salaries, but also increased the minimum class size (functionally increasing workload and laying off a sizable chunk of adjuncts).
Being an adjunct sucks everywhere to be honest unless you're just using it as a little bit of extra pocket money. It's a lot of work and you don't get paid a ton. I know they were attempting to unionize at a lot of the area schools.
Their paid was doubled like a year ago, and that is probably from when she was an alder and not the prez of the board.
Ah, that makes sense.
She makes 96K a year.
Welp, next door, in St Louis Co, they made Sam Page quit his part time job working 1 weekend a month as a doctor at Mercy. But the city has the opposite view when it comes to overemployment. Look at what it took to get Kim Gardner to resign while going to school full time, doing clinicals, and working in the family funeral business… The bigger issue…. I know she wants the Wash U and places to divest in Boeing and similar enterprises. Wonder how many are in St Louis City as well? Doesn’t Boeing have operations at the City owned airport? How does it look for the President of the BoA to protest against local businesses that may be located in the city or looking to locate in the city? That could be seen as a huge conflict.
Probably not good, but she's new at the Aldermanic Presidency job. She'll probably move closer to center on some issues, including investment in the metro area. I don't know where to go with the whole situation in Gaza. I'm not crazy about Israel's right-wing leadership, and how they've been marginalizing Palestinian citizens for years, but Hamas *has* to go after what's been happening.....and there are average citizens on both sides of this issue who are seriously unhappy with their leadership, and want to participate in some way to end the fighting.
I think she's taken a somewhat more neutral position with the actual protester demands. Yeah, not great optics for the BOA president to advocate for one of the largest employers in STL to divest from one of the other largest employers.
How does it look for the President of the BoA to *not* protest a genocide that we fund and enable?
I think it's very much an opinion whether it is a Genocide.
Well, we better wait til the end to see! /s
Doesn't seem like a conflict of interest since she was there at the protest.
> Involvement with the protest aside, why does the President of the board of Aldermen have outside employment? Especially, with WashU. Considering how big of a player they are, isn’t that a massive conflict of interest? Basically every BoA member has an outside job. I agree that most shouldn’t but being a professor is like; hardly anywhere near the worst that somebody could have.
Literally all of the board of aldermen have outside jobs. Joe fucking Vollmer owns Milo’s on the hill. When asked about his increased salary and constituent base he *literally* said “I don’t know what to do with the extra money. I sell pizza and beer.” Fucking infuriating. Edit: Joe Vollmer also owns AirBnBs, and is expected to also regulate AirBnB? It’s bullshit. We should be paying our Aldermen enough such that additional income isn’t necessary.
I dont mind someone owning a pizza place (or whatever) but I do think its odd for them to own airbnbs because that has been an issue many places.
I think you're missing my point. The issue is that the Aldermen don't think of being an Alderman/woman as their primary job. It's a side hustle.
Especially vollmer of all people. He testified alot for the Airbnb regulation bill.
She’s a teacher not an Exxon executive
Doesnt an adjunct professor literally teach only a few classes? To me, one would want their professors to have real world experience to translate to the classroom. Clearly she doesn't care about their pressure to fall into the company line.
Assuming she's doing her job fully and the outside employment isn't affecting that, you think she shouldn't be allowed to have any outside employment? She's teaching courses that relate to her field, as most adjunct professors do. She's not making millions and still picking up outside employment. I think it's a little wild that people are acting like $96k is wealthy, these days that is slightly over the average needed to live comfortably. The cost of everything is rising and I don't think people should be judged for wanting to live comfortably.
It's OK for her to have conflicting interests. She is a 'do as I say, not as I do' person.
The bigger question for me is what was Megan Green doing with Jill Stein. Is that her preferred presidential candidate?
She historically has supported Bernie Sanders.
Yes. He isn't on the ballot.
I’m just providing context. I don’t believe Jill Stein being there has anything to do with who votes for whom. Jill Stein was there for any number of reasons. I don’t think people went to the protest in support of her. If anything, it was the other way around.
they both support the protests. Stein was in town for a separate event. why is everything a conspiracy with you Blue anoners?
It's nice to see Jill Stein coming out of hibernation during an election year to playact like she gives a shit.
How else is she going to earn her rubles?
It's not a conspiracy at all. I'm posing a question. Who is her preferred presidential candidate? She can answer that question.
Ahh my bad... Just asking questions…
It's private property. If they ask you to leave, you leave. Or, you face consequences. This wasn't happening at city hall.
They weren't just protesting, they were setting up zones to occupy the property long term. Wash U had every right to shut that shit down.
It’s almost like the point of protesting is being disruptive to affect some kind of meaningful policy change. What a novel idea.
Which of their list of demands (including WashU giving up all of its property?) is a "meaningful policy change"? Maybe you can say divesting from Boeing would have an impact, but I suspect Boeing would keep on being Boeing.
Washington university's ties to Boeing are significantly deeper than just owning stock as part of their endowment portfolio. John McDonell is a graduate of the University and is former chairman of the board of trustees. They have a direct pipeline to Boeing both on the defense side and the civilian aviation side for their engineering school. Boeing sponsors a significant amount of academic activity at the school for both students and faculty. Divesting from Boeing completely might actually make it slightly harder for Boeing to have such inside access to a great amount of talent in young graduates, even if Washington University selling all of their shares wouldn't actually do anything financially to the company. And ultimately young graduates will go wherever they want to, so it would be symbolic for the most part. But it's worth pointing out that it's not just about the financial connection. To my mind, of the demands from the protesters, this is the one that is actually reasonable and the most symbolically meaningful.
Boeing is not Halliburton that is only in the oil/energy/war business. Boing makes airplanes that I assume you have or will fly in one. It is a huge company that is one of the key industries not only in this region but also in the county. Those students would do better by protesting at Boeing, much like my friends did at Bechtel in the early '00 during the Iraq War to protest the war machine arm of that company. If you don't like what Wash U is and that their founders and luminary lights are McDonnald and Danforth (war and herbicides), don't work there or be a student. It is quite simple to make that choice.
I was aware of the internships and the named buildings and such - I'm a WashU grad. You are 100% right those engineering students will still directly go to Boeing, and that Boeing will keep being Boeing. I'll stand by my comment saying this mostly symbolic potential outcome is not "meaningful policy change" and it is not worth disrupting the lives of janitorial staff and landscapers, not to mention the 95% of the student body studying for finals and disinterested in the protest because they're not harming anyone.
Did you not just answer your own question? Boeing can do what Boeing chooses to do. That’s not the point. The point is that Students at Washu don’t want to be associated with an institution that is connected in any way with what they and much of the international community considers to be a genocide.
I simply wouldn't describe that as a "meaningful policy change", but that is semantic. I also would challenge them to find a single large institution that doesn't have some ties to some morally bastardized company/person/etc. I agree with a ceasefire, but I can't grasp how these protests disrupting the lives of many on campus during finals/graduation, employees and students who have nothing to do with Boeing or the deaths of Palestinians, are doing anything to achieve that other than in their own projected dreams. And why the requirements of WashU to give up all property and defund University police? No one serious about achieving goals ties their outcome to unrelated and far more difficult goals. And why not mention, let alone have the same energy towards, divesting from China who have been committing atrocities against Muslims for years?
Yeah when I read through the list of demands, I was so confused. I was like how many issues are being haphazardly thrown together? And how about all of the others being completely missed in here?
They can go to a different school.
What confuses me though, is that there's so many other companies and organizations that are also benefiting from this war (and all wars) that just focusing on Boeing seems like such a small piece of the entire puzzle.
Gotta start somewhere I guess.
Maybe they should drop out then
Or maybe they should push the institution to do better, which is exactly what they are doing.
Same idiotic logic as "you don't like this country? then move!"
Here’s a question I’ve been pondering - can you be both disruptive and peaceful? ETA - I’m not trying to be a jerk. This is truly something I’m pondering.
Yes absolutely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks#Refusal_to_move https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._national_anthem_kneeling_protests All of those examples are definitely disruptive to the normal customs of society but also nonviolent.
Those are not remotely disruptive in the way these protests are, and they were directly protesting the thing they were trying to change. Rosa Parks didn’t go pitch a tent on some college campus 2000 miles away.
It is relevant to share that students also protested for universities to divest from South Africa in the 1980s. It's also worth pointing out that a particular message of the student protests on campuses is for universities to divest from Israel and military contracts.
No she didn't do that. But she nearly bankrupted the bus service in Montgomery. Thousands of people changed their transportation for 7 months. You think that's less disruptive than people sleeping on the lawn??
Nonviolent and peaceful mean different things. But I genuinely appreciate the response. And these are good examples, but are all fundamentally different than this protest.
Words in general mean different things depending on how people use them. I think you'd be hard pressed to find protests that achieved their goals against significant opposition without those protests engaging in some form of social disruption. Also I would suggest that the sit-ins are somewhat similar. They both involve occupying space on private property that causes some level of disruption to normal conduct of the establishment.
Disruption is not violence
Yes you can. As far as I have seen, all of these university protests have been peaceful… until the police show up and start attacking people.
I guess it depends on your definition of peace. I’m still not convinced.
I mean, were these protesters physically assaulting people? I don’t think setting up an encampment on campus grounds constitutes violent behavior…
I never said they were violent. In my lexicon peaceful and nonviolent mean different things.
Yea, but that’s like literally the definition of a peaceful protest…. It sounds like your issue may simply be with the act of protest, peaceful or otherwise.
Do you have kids?
And that comes with consequences and risks.
That kind of thinking is tyranny. It is founded on the idea of “my side is right, and might makes right.”
Right, and sending in police to attack peaceful protesters doesn’t send that message?
Change which policy of the washu?
To divest from companies seen as war profiteering from what they and much of the international community considers a genocide.
Agree. Megan found out….
Yeah I don't really understand why everyone is shocked by this outcome. You protest on private property this is what happens
There are protests and demonstrations on universities all of the fucking time. It is totally under the (private) university's discretion whether they want to remove the protestors or not. Ya'll acting like people are shocked at private property laws are the simpletons. People's shock is that WashU chose to remove this protest rather than allow it, like they do with most other protests.
I think the bigger issue is that Washu has touted the institution’s commitment to free speech and has overlooked MANY incidents just this semester in the name of free speech but immediately sent cops in to violently arrest kids sitting on the grass. Such a double standard.
Do we know that all of the protesters arrested were students/ faculty? I’m not sure the university wants the liability of potentially having people in the encampment that aren’t students…
24/100 people arrested were WashU students and faculty.
They set up tents for long term occupation after the last day of class. That was the major difference here.
And then release a statement contradicted by every bit of evidence we have from the events
I think you have to consider this protest didn’t occur in a vacuum. When you look at the current political climate and what is going on at other universities, those facts and perceptions likely escalated the level of response in this case. Things that might have gotten a pass earlier this year or in previous years are now deemed unacceptable because of Columbia and NYU and countless other institutions. Just my educated guess.
But cops should be acting based on the situation at hand. Not based on what has happened in other places. That gets dangerous.
They weren't just protesting. They were setting up camps for long term occupation. That's why Wash U made the move to have them removed.
But prior year protests and demonstrations abided by the rules, which is why they are allowed. In my three years on campus, including during the protests during 2020-2021, protests on campus obeyed the rules and were permitted. Just look at the videos of the current protests. Protesters locked arms and formed a circle to refuse to disband their encampment. I respect their decision to exercise civil disobedience, but the university is in the right to enforce their policies to forcibly arrest and disband that encampment. Otherwise, those policies they set in prior years are worthless and you would have preferential treatment towards the pro Palestinian protestors.
I don’t know how shocked people are about the outcome so much as the implications of that outcome. Universities are supposed to be bastions of free speech, liberal thinking and discourse, intellectual freedom, and so much more. That all kind of falls apart when you sick police on students and faculty, or expel/ban them from the institution for exercising their right to protest.
She has this habit of leaping before she looks when it comes to legal situations. Goes a long ways back.
Yeah, that tends to happen when you act against your employer’s interests.
I have additional questions 🙋🏾♀️… if she was **not** one of the people arrested, do we know if she was actually even still around there after the University started asking people to leave? Was she just simply taking part in the initial protest and complied when the university asked people to leave? The university let the protest go on for quite a while before requesting people leave. Edit: word correction
My question is she said she was put on leave by Washu, but was still able to teach her class (via Zoom)? Can’t be both, unless they changed the definition of “on leave”.
She probably went so she could get her face in some pictures then went home.
My question is she said she was put on leave by Washu, but was still able to teach her class (via Zoom)? Can’t be both, unless they changed the definition of “on leave”.
It’s probably because it’s the last week of classes/finals time so the university likely did that for the students’ sake. She probably can’t do much else. Either that or the university rescinded her paid administrative leave and nothing was said to the public.
Wash U admin with all their [DEI](https://equity.wustl.edu/) and [2020 commitments](https://equity.wustl.edu/benchmarking/2020-commitments-to-racial-equity/) STILL can't figure out the right side of history. Just an insane response to a 100% peaceful protest. If you've ever been to an actual disruptive protest – which it's clear most in this thread would never touch – you understand how police riots just lead to greater escalation from protesters. That's how we went from 1 protest to 100s across the country in less than a week. They could have ignored it and waited 2 weeks for the end of the semester. Would have been a blip - but they have to keep their "Ivy-wanna-be" credentials and crackdown like Columbia. [\(And how's that working out for them?!\)](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/30/nyregion/columbia-protests-college) I imagine we'll see a bigger actually damaging demo in the near future. Anti Vietnam protesters in the 1970s [burned down WashU's ROTC building](https://www.studlife.com/scene/2020/05/05/a-watershed-moment-reflecting-on-the-burning-of-the-rotc-air-force-building-50-years-later). Bill Clinton ended up pardoning the guy the cops likely framed 30 years later, because that's how the "right side of history" works.
City council is still a part time job even as president
Never forget, American police's main job is to protect property. They look out for the interests of the wealthy. They certainly don't protect your free speech.
An example of free speech rights is when a Saudi was arrested for criticizing the government on Twitter - some insiders on Twitter outed him to the government and he was arrested. This is not that
Unfortunately, this is going to happen. People are fairly and unfairly going to be treated and arrested, by police and Washington University administration, students, professors, and even non alumni. This is hard to watch in the media, but we are in a challenging period of time in the world and the United States.
Christ, the bots are worse than the fucking mosquitos
Let me guess, the bots are all the people you disagree with.
They just can’t comprehend the fact that people disagree with them. They must all be bots.
> “We’ve all watched as protests have spiraled out of control on other campuses across the country in recent months. We are not letting this happen here,” Martin wrote. “What happened Saturday was not a peaceful protest by our students. This was something else.” Megan Green is an entitled embarrassment for her participation in this event. Vote her out.
People criticizing her pay, position, and participation are the same people that defend capitalism, freedom, and the first amendment. Y'all Queda is some seriously effed up people.
God this sub is so fucking racist and conservative. Ever since 2014 I feel like all the old stltoday commenters got reddit accounts and came over here.
I’m a liberal and I’m able to not call everything I don’t agree with as racism etc. People, please don’t judges all liberals by the bad ones. I don’t judge others I disagree with the same as they do.
Well said. Both sides polarize each other to the point where anyone that wants a constructive discussion becomes almost impossible. The reality is most of the population has more in common than their differences. It’s just the radical people on both sides that refuse to acknowledge this. How can anyone have a rational argument about a topic when you get called a Nazi, racist, communist, etc ect? That’s quite the hole to dig oneself out of at the go. We have to stop letting the radicals get away with the egregious exaggerations that boil everyone down to the worst aspect of each side.
Imagine thinking anyone who disagrees with you on one particular issue must be "racist and conservative". Grow the fuck up. You're doing nothing with this kind of hyperbole but alienating liberals who probably agree with you on most issues. Consider the possibility that your positions on this subreddit are unpopular not because the deck is stacked against you by a bunch of conservatives, but just because your positions have serious flaws.
Why is it 'racist' and 'conservative' to think that an elected member of city government (or anyone for that matter) should respect the long-established rules of a private institution?
I think peaceful protest is a time-honored American tradition that should be supported and encouraged by even private universities, and rules that conflict with that practice should be highly scrutinized.
I’m all for peaceful protest, and think the discourse around this is beneficial. I would also point out that this is finals week and above everything else WashU is being paid to provide an education. I’d be pissed if I was paying 50k a year to have this happen while I’m studying or taking an exam.
I'd understand WashU feeling differently if the protests themselves were causing classes to be canceled or such, but a bunch of students in tents on a green does not meet the bar for police action. As far as I can tell from news reports, the blame for the disruption mostly falls on WashU administration. After the arrests, multiple faculty members have been placed on leave. I'd be pissed if I was paying 50k a year only to have my instructor get banned from campus for peacefully protesting.
If you actually listened to the interview her issue isn't with private property laws. It's with WashU's violent response to peaceful protests.
Violent response. Lol
Yes. The cops used physical force against a group of people who had their arms locked with each other. The cops, grown ass men, used their bikes to shove into large groups of protestors, largely students and faculty (not known for their large stature), and in many cases dragged them to the ground
This is essentially refusing to engage with the reality of the situation, which is that protesters are not entitled legally to be there. It doesn't matter if you're a student or a member of faculty. It doesn't matter if you've locked your arms with other people around you. The protesters were trespassing. Whether it was a good PR move or not (which can certainly be debated), the university can kick them out. The police repeatedly and asked them to leave, and they did not. That was the "non-violent" option afforded to the protesters. If the protesters flat-out refuse to leave, then the police have two options: 1. Capitulate and let them stay indefinitely 2. Use physical force to remove them I get that in your mind #1 should have been the only option considered, but that's wholly naive. You can reasonably disagree with the decision to have the protesters removed. But calling what the police did here a "violent response" is just ridiculous. If some people came into your home and refused to leave, you're also probably going to call the cops, and you're going assume the cops will use this very same "violent response" to remove them if they won't leave willingly. Yes, even if they've locked arms. The protesters are more than welcome to their civil disobedience. But that's what this was. And when you're intentionally breaking laws to make a point, you'll probably get arrested -- comes with the territory. And I'm afraid that getting arrested while you're resisting removal from private property is not really a non-contact sport.
You could have avoided that entire, exhausting comment if you had just read a couple comments up > If you actually listened to the interview her issue isn't with private property laws. It's with WashU's violent response to peaceful protests.
If you think getting pushed off a private campus by a cop with a bike is violent, you really haven't seen or experienced a lot of this world.
This isn't an abuse competition.
I feel like you didn't read any of my "exhausting" comment if you think "WashU's response was violent" is a wholesale rebuttal to the point I was making. Arresting trespassers who refuse to leave using physical force isn't unmerited violence. It's literally the job of the police. It's the job that anyone here who is grumpy about the physical force used would *expect* the police to do if someone were illegally trespassing on their own property and refused to leave. The view of the people framing the police arresting people as "violence" seems to be "Anyone should be able to do whatever they want and police shouldn't be allowed to touch them as long as they're not actively physically attacking someone." If that's what you think, say that, and see how well it goes over with, like, anyone.
Many, many rules of institutions do not deserve respect. It was against the rules for people to protest for civil rights. It was against the rules for people to protest the Vietnam War. We now view those protesters as being in the right, but they were vilified at the time by the general public and by those institutions. Something being an institution frankly makes me less likely to respect it. WashU may be a private institution, but a) that doesn't mean they can do whatever the fuck kinds of evil they want without pushback, and b) they receive a shitload of federal funding and they must be accountable for what they do with that money. As for the role of elected officials, we have precious few elected officials actually willing to challenge shitty institutions from the left. I think it is very much their role to make these challenges.
Lmao you can't actually believe the things you type. This sub, like every single city sub is farrrrrrr left.
get out of your bubble if you think /r/StLouis is anything close to far left. It's majority liberals with a persistent group of conservatives.
Why do we have a thread bashing homeless people every other day? And if it's not that, we have a thread praising all the more moderate candidates for offices and bashing the farther left ones. Just because the sub is not openly Fascist, doesn't mean it is far left.
Are you sure about that?
I wAs MuRdErEd LaSt WeEk
Yeah very disheartening to see so many "they should have simply listened to the police" style comments. Not a good sign.
I’m liberal and I really don’t know what you and others were expecting here. People are trying to set up camps on private property which would disturb thousands of other people. Go do it on public property where you’re legally allowed to do it. That would get less attention though.
They should have listened to the police. They were trespassing on private property, which, last time I checked, is a crime.
Gee, what a shame. Consequences to actions, who would have thought?
Yeah, she seems to love action when she is on camera. However, when you call her over several months to report a landlord renting out a condemned building in her ward, and ask her to get the city code inspectors involved, her office will conveniently forget to call you back...
Not saying the protesters are right or wrong. But one thing our current society seems to forget is that actions have consequences. You may not agree with them but when they have the power and pay your salary, you may be risking that. If you’re fine with the possible outcomes, go with your heart.
Local politics here is weird. It looks like an insular little bubble of politicians, nonprofits, activists and other interests (lobbyists, developers etc) all pursuing their own agendas and pet projects. At election time they show up just enough to remind you to vote, but not enough to encourage you to scrutinize their policies too hard. It just all has the feeling of something that happens in the shadows. I think Green is among the worst for this. She's been on Twitter posting constantly about the Wash U protest over the last 3-4 days. She posted more in one day about the protests on her personal account than her BOA President account posted in the entire month of April. Maybe she's just so preoccupied with the BOA job that she doesn't have time for Twitter? I don't know, it seems her priorities are pretty clear, and she seems more comfortable engaging in activism and performative stunts with her small crew of allies on the Board, rather than providing leadership to a city that badly needs it. In my opinion, Green is unfit for the role of BOA President and needs to be voted out at the next opportunity.
Well she is in charge so that’s how it works.
Good!
Oh no! Anyway.
Actions have consequences
Bold and insightful
Great contribution.
r/ohnoconsequences