Video seems to show black UTSA student escorted from class for having feet propped up
The University of Texas at San Antonio was investigating after a video posted Monday appeared to show a black student being escorted from class by police for putting her feet up on a chair.
A fellow student, Apurva Rawal, shared the video on Twitter.
“A girl had her feet up and the professor called the police after calling our class uncivil,” Rawal said in the tweet, which garnered 20,000 retweets by Tuesday.
In the video, a group of officers stands in the back of a classroom. A professor, identified as Anita Moss, points at a black female student sitting down in a middle row. When approached by police, the student stands up and leaves with the officers.
On Twitter, Rawal said the professor stopped class and stepped out to call police because the student had her feet up on the seat in front of her.
“Mind you she wasn’t talking or interrupting lecture,” he said in a tweet.
“The class before this professor went on a whole tirade about how uncivil we all were because a few students were on their phone or not paying attention, cutting lecture time for the rest of us because her ego was bruised,” he tweeted.
Another Twitter user, @FavoritePaigee, replied to the video and said she was the student taken out by police.
UTSA President Taylor Eighmy responded to the video in an email to students that was posted on the university’s website:
“Dear Roadrunners,
Today we had an incident where one of our African American students was escorted from a biology class by members of UTSA’s police department at the request of a faculty member.
“While the facts aren’t fully known regarding today’s incident, our Office of Equal Opportunity Services is already conducting an investigation into possible discrimination,” the email says. “This concerns me greatly, and it’s incumbent upon us as an institution to face this head-on.”
He also mentioned the arrival of Dr. Myron Anderson, the university’s new Vice President for Inclusive Excellence who will “assist us with developing a strategy to address these systemic issues,” Eighmy said.
Kimberly Espy, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the university, tweeted in response to the video:
“COS Interim Dean Howard Grimes and I both are aware of the video that was taken in a biology classroom earlier today. Creating a classroom environment that is conducive to learning is our priority, so we too are concerned and will respond accordingly when we learn more.”
This story was originally published November 13, 2018 at 8:28 PM.
