“The information are that Liberty College’s response to the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic is indistinguishable from that of many, if not most, univer
“The information are that Liberty College’s response to the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic is indistinguishable from that of many, if not most, universities, and, extra importantly, it had not skilled a single on-campus pupil or worker testing optimistic for Covid-19,” he stated this week in a press release that ignored sicknesses amongst off-campus members of the Liberty neighborhood.
To his supporters, he has been much less temperate. The media, he stated in a radio interview with John Fredericks, who recognized himself as a Trump marketing campaign operative, “simply need energy, they’re authoritarian, they’re like nothing I’ve seen since, for those who return in historical past, to Nazi Germany. That’s what they remind me of.”
And he has spared no effort to defend his actions since articles on Liberty’s reopening ran in ProPublica and The New York Occasions. He pursued arrest warrants for misdemeanor trespassing towards two journalists, Alec MacGillis, a reporter for ProPublica, and Julia Rendleman, a contract photographer for The Occasions. He enlisted a New York legislation agency to threaten authorized motion towards the Occasions and, he has stated, different shops as nicely.
He referred to as a Occasions reporter shortly earlier than midnight, leaving a voice mail message that stated, “you’re in some critical hassle.” He accused the journalists of placing his college students in danger as a result of they traveled from New York Metropolis. (They didn’t.)
Final week, Liberty ran full-page advertisements in regional newspapers saying that reopening the campus after spring break put Liberty “in fairly good firm” with Virginia Tech, the College of California at Los Angeles, Texas A&M, and Arizona State College.
However all of these actions have had penalties.
Liberty’s authorized menace towards the photographer elicited a response from the newspaper’s counsel, David McCraw.
“Julia was engaged in probably the most routine type of information gathering: taking photos for a information story,” Mr. McCraw stated in a press release. “We’re disenchanted that Liberty College would determine to make that right into a prison case and go after a contract journalist as a result of its officers had been sad with press protection of the college’s determination to reopen campus within the midst of the pandemic.”