A college professor and former Democratic mayor assigned his constitutional-law students an essay prompt on “Donald Rump,” who “has been known to target women, minorities, and the disabled.”
“Rump’s show undoubtedly include [sic] offensive material and has been known to target women, minorities, and the disabled,” said the prompt presented by Professor Ryan Coonerty of the University of California Santa Cruz, Campus Reform reported.
Coonerty, a former mayor of Santa Cruz, was teaching a course titled “Problems in Constitutional Law: Free Expression.”
“Rump’s show undoubtedly include [sic] offensive material and has been known to target women, minorities, and the disabled,” said the prompt.
It set up a hypothetical scenario in which a fictitious student group, “Students for Offensive Speech,” invited “controversial reality TV star” “Donald Rump” to the campus.
The analysis comprised 30 percent of the students’ grade for the law class.
A student in the class who wished to remain anonymous told Campus Reform she initially was surprised by the assignment.
“My teacher has stayed pretty neutral despite his political background, and I showed my friends, who also thought it was a joke of an assignment, but it’s understandable since he was once mayor of Santa Cruz, and UCSC was just named #1 liberal school in the U.S., I think,” she said.
Coonerty’s prompt said Rump’s show “will feature music with offensive lyrics, strippers, and anti-immigrant speakers.”
“It is rumored that he will be handing out the names, photos, and addresses of student leaders and faculty who are outspoken in their support for transgender, Muslim, and undocumented communities.”
Students were asked to assume the role of UCSC’s general counsel and advise the chancellor on how to handle the situation by citing case law.
Coonerty told Campus Reform the assignment was “meant to be a fun fact pattern for the students to apply what they’ve learned about campus speech codes, incitement, hate speech and obscenity.”
“As a course on free expression, I encourage debate and all viewpoints,” the professor said.
He added “that even though I’m a Democratic politician in my day job, my course is very popular with conservative students on campus because I try to argue all sides.”
