A professor allegedly singled out and bullied college student Leah Almstedt because she works part-time as a producer for a local radio station. (Disclosure: This reporter works for the same radio station.)
Almstedt shared a tweet recounting the alleged incident, which she said occurred Tuesday at Lindenwood University in Missouri.
So this was my morning… pic.twitter.com/fhZ967br2o
— Leah Almstedt (@leah_almstedt) March 29, 2022
Almstedt told The Daily Wire that the teacher, identified as Andrew Millians, had been talking with a group of students outside of class time, but that she had overheard parts of the conversation while she played on her phone.
The conversation, Leah said, was about murder and the fact that only people who were directly involved with the crime would have any knowledge of it.
“But let’s say we kill Leah and we need to hide the body,” the teacher said then, and Leah said it caught her attention because Millians did not typically single out or pick on individual students like that.
After, she gave him a confused look, he quickly replied, “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”
Leah said that if he had stopped there, she would have simply let it pass, dismissing it as an awkward joke — but he didn’t.
“We’re not going to kill you, but nobody likes you,” Millians reportedly continued, prompting another look from Leah — this one less amused.
Millians again claimed that he was kidding, adding, “It’s just because you work for a conservative radio station.”
Millians did not respond to a Daily Wire request for comment.
Leah explained that this wasn’t her first awkward exchange with Millians, and she explained how he had learned where she worked along with his initial reaction to that.
“This is a screenwriting class that is required for my major. I didn’t choose to take it, I have to take it,” Almstedt said, and she detailed a recent assignment that required her to write a script for and then conduct an interview. She chose to interview her boss, Jeff Allen, about the new conservative talk radio station he had started in St. Louis last summer: Newstalk STL.
“We had to stand up in front of the class and talk about what we were writing about and who we were interviewing, and when I said I was interviewing the owner of the radio station I worked for, the teacher wanted more details about the station because he had not ever heard of it,” Almstedt continued.
“I said, ‘Well, it’s a conservative talk station,’” Almstedt said. “And he said, ‘Oh, well, that’s why I haven’t heard about it.’”
She said that she tried to continue with her presentation, but that Millians continued to interrupt her with more questions about the radio station — and at one point, he asked her who the station’s “audience” was.
She told him that the audience was primarily middle-aged men.
“Middle-aged white men,” he corrected her.
“Not necessarily,” Almstedt objected, and she pointed out to The Daily Wire that two of the station’s regular weekday hosts were black men.
“But it’s a conservative station, so your audience is going to be white,” Millians replied.
“None of my classmates reacted, no one thought it was funny,” Almstedt added.
Since Tuesday’s incident, Almstedt has filed a complaint with the Dean’s office and the school has already reached out to her to discuss the matter. She said that she made it clear that her goal was not to get the teacher canceled or fired, only to drive home the message that he couldn’t treat students that way.
“I’m not trying to get him canceled or fired. I don’t need him to apologize. I just need him to know he can’t do that,” she said. “I don’t think less of the school, I think this is just a teacher issue. I don’t want people to see this and think the school is at fault or that it’s a bad school.”
The Daily Wire obtained the following statement from Lindenwood University: “Lindenwood values multiple viewpoints and regrets to hear of these concerns from one of our students. Lindenwood takes seriously these concerns – and the concerns of all students – and is in the process of looking into the matter. If true, these statements would not be an accurate reflection of our commitment to creating an open and welcoming educational environment and corrective actions will be taken, as appropriate, to stop its occurrence, remedy its effects, and prevent its recurrence.”
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Source: Dailywire
