What happened to #IBelieveHer?
A Georgetown law professor was fired for simply telling the truth…
That black students are “plain at the bottom” of her class every semester.
Now… let us be very clear.
The law professor was NOT saying that she places black students at the bottom of her class.
Nor was she saying that black students deserve to be at the bottom of her class.
She was simply stating the fact and the observation that every semester, black students somehow perform worse than other students.
This is likely due to Affirmative Action (but that’s a topic for an entirely different blog post).
Now, this professor has been fired because the Zoom conversation leaked on social media.
But that’s not all.
ANOTHER professor has been suspended!
Why?
For not pushing back against the initial professor’s statements, which again, we her true experiences.
https://twitter.com/QasimRashid/status/1370093458879352847
https://twitter.com/hahmad1996/status/1369786323293310985
Assuming Sandra Sellers grades all her students fairly and based on merit, doesn’t that mean her statement was simply an observation?
Why and how would that be racist?
The Daily Mail reports that she has since been fired:
Georgetown Law has fired one white professor and placed another on administrative leave after a video of their discussion about a black student was condemned on social media.
Dean Bill Treanor anounced on Thursday that the school had ended its relationship with Professor Sandra Sellers, 62, after the video showed her complaining on Zoom that black students were predominantly at the bottom of her class.
She was speaking to Professor David Batson, who was placed on leave on Thursday for not correcting Sellers pending a further investigation by the prestigious law school, which was attended by former first daughter Tiffany Trump.
The interaction happened at the conclusion of a negotiations class around February 21, which was being recorded so that students could watch it later, according to the Washington Post.
The professors had stayed on Zoom to discuss the students after they left and where unaware that it was still recording. It was online for two weeks until students noticed the conversation between Sellers and Batson at the end and reported it to the school on Monday.
‘They were a bit jumbled. It’s like let me reason through that, what you just said,’ Sellers said of a student’s performance, who the Black Law Students Asssociation claims is the only black person in the class.
‘You know what? I hate to say this, I end up having this angst every semester, that a lot of my lower ones are blacks,’ the adjunct professor of mediation and negotiation continued.
‘It happens almost every semester, and it’s like, oh, come on. You know, we get some really good ones but there also usually some of them that are just plain at the bottom,’ Sellers concludes.
Batson, also a mediation law expert, does not initially respond but simply looks down and nods in the short 43-second clip, which was allegedly leaked to social media by a student.
He subsequently returns to discussing the student in question, stating, ‘what drives [him] crazy is…the concept of how that plays out in whether that is [his] own perceptions playing in here with certain people’ or ‘[his] own unconscious biases playing out in the scheme of things’.
The school was immediately called on to act as the video of the interaction spread.
The dean said Thursday that Sellers told him she had intended to resign when they met to discuss what he branded as the ‘reprehensible statements concerning the evaluation of Black students’.
She also issued a statement to the Post on Thursday in which she apologized for the ‘hurtful and misdirected remarks’.
‘I would never do anything to intentionally hurt my students or Georgetown Law and wish I could take back my words,’ Sellers said in the resignation letter.
‘Regardless of my intent, I have done irreparable harm and I am truly sorry for this.’
The Zoom call was posted to online database Panopto, where students, who have been attending classes virtually because of the pandemic, can access the recordings.
According to Hassan Ahmad, who is on the school’s admission committee, it was discovered on Panopto by one of the students in the professors’ negotiation class.
A lot of law schools have students turn in assignments based on numbers.
This prevents professors from being able to give “favor” to certain students.
The numbers and the students correlating with those numbers aren’t revealed until the end of the semester.
We do not know for certain whether or not Georgetown utilizes this system, but if they do, then that would suggest that Sellers graded her students equally and without bias.
This would strongly suggest that her comments were merely an observation.
Yet… she’s been fired.
1 Georgetown University professor terminated, 2nd on leave after racist comment complaints https://t.co/ODr8dLvct1
— FOX 5 DC (@fox5dc) March 11, 2021
Sandra Sellers Georgetown Law Bio Taken Down https://t.co/t0WWTbmxDI
— Preston Green (@DrPrestonGreen) March 11, 2021
Georgetown has called Sellers’ comments “reprehensible,” when it appears she was simply stating an observation.
The Washington Post confirms that she has indeed been fired for these comments:
A Georgetown law professor was terminated and a second was placed on leave after a video clip showed a conversation between the pair that included what an official called “reprehensible” statements about Black students, officials said Thursday.
The conversation between adjunct professors Sandra Sellers and David Batson had triggered an investigation by Georgetown University’s office of diversity, equity and affirmative action. The school’s Black Law Students Association had called for Sellers’s firing.
The video clip — which was shared on Twitter this week — showed Sellers discussing student performance.
“I hate to say this. I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks,” Sellers said in the video. “Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, ‘Oh, come on.’ You get some really good ones, but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.”
Law Center Dean William Treanor said Thursday that he informed Sellers she was terminated and that she had indicated she had planned to resign. Batson was placed on administrative leave pending the investigation, Treanor said.
Sellers shared a resignation letter with The Washington Post in which she apologized for the “hurtful and misdirected remarks” that were part of a longer discussion about patterns in class participation.
“I would never do anything to intentionally hurt my students or Georgetown Law and wish I could take back my words,” Sellers said in the letter. “Regardless of my intent, I have done irreparable harm and I am truly sorry for this.”
Batson did not did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Hassan Ahmad, a Georgetown Law student who posted clips of the remarks on Twitter, said the conversation happened at the conclusion of a negotiations class around Feb. 21 that was being recorded so that students could view it later. Sellers and Batson stayed on the call after students left, so their conversation was recorded, as well, Ahmad said.
The recording was online for about two weeks before students noticed the conversation between Sellers and Batson, Ahmad said. The video was reported Monday morning, then taken down soon after, he said.
Just because someone says something negative and race-related in the same sentence, it does not mean that they are being racist.
Just saying.
Perhaps the snowflake generation needs to experience more of the real world.
Karma is coming…
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