A Ball State University professor called the police on a student after he refused to move seats

[whopis01]

Source: CNN

When Sultan Benson, a senior at Ball State University in Indiana, arrived at his Marketing 310 class on Tuesday, his usual seat was taken. His professor, Shaheen Borna, suggested he move to an empty seat toward the back, which he did, Benson told CNN.

But about a half hour into the class, another student left and Borna asked Benson to move up. But Benson was already settled. He'd unpacked his stuff, and his laptop was already out and charging.

"Either move your seat or I call the police," Benson recalled Borna saying.
"Are you really about to call the police?" Benson said he asked at the time.
The answer was yes.


Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/24/us/ball-state-university-police-seat-change-trnd/index.html

---

I wish I could say unbelievable.

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Control freak in the classroom

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Shoulda called police on the student that left the class, ... not that one either. . . . nt

[Perseus]

25. No, he should not call any police, in College its up to you if you attend class or not

and there some times when you need to get out of class, where is the crime on that? We don't know what reason the student who left the class had to leave, maybe to register with another professor for the same course? I did that once, I had not registered for that class, went into the room and when I realized how crazy the professor was I decided to register with another professor, there is no crime in that.

He should have to explain, in detail, why he took those measures and then let him go for the remainder of the semester without pay while he takes some civil classes.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

27. My point was that the student who left was more disruptive than the student who stayed seated, but

... as I clearly stated in my post, the prof should not have called police on either student.

[Lonestarblue]

3. Common sense is in short supply in this country.

What does it matter where a student sits!!!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Better learning for all students if even the shadow students sit closer. Even so,

Even so, the prof's response was stupid and bizarre and hurtful.

Concentrated grouping is better for the teacher since they don't have to talk as loud or look around so far to see how they are being received.

It is better for group cohesiveness and class responsiveness if they are near each other.

It works better in almost all ways, but the prof was way over the top and needs to be officially reprimanded.

[csziggy]

15. Common sense would have been to ask the student to move at the beginning of the class

I mean the student who was sitting in the harassed student's usual seat. Since the professor did not and he instructed Sultan to move to a different seat, he should just allowed Sultan to stay in the seat he'd been directed to sit in. Making a student change in the middle of class was disruptive and unnecessary.

[Perseus]

28. I think there is a lot of anger, there is a lot of wanting to hurt other people for no reason

There is a lot of anxiety and I feel people are so desperate they end up making stupid mistakes. The con and republicans have created a high level of anxiety in the country, we are in a bad place right now, things must change because it only gets downhill from here, I have seen it happen in other countries.

[defacto7]

32. +1

[sinkingfeeling]

4. I can't believe this country has turned into such a place.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

10. 'Twas ever thus. The idea of the modern police department is rooted in the history of

controlling black people.

[Bradical79]

17. Yup

Evolved directly from the old "slave patrols".

[the_sly_pig]

29. That's an enormous leap for this situation.

Idiot calls police, police cannot refuse to respond, police investigate situation, result is that professor confirmed to be idiot, idiot apologizes.

Were I the student I would not want to attend that professors class anymore either. The university should allow the student to make the changes he needs.

Supposed adults call the police for all manner of ridiculousness.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

30. It's not a leap at all. The professor had quite a few options he could have exercised to move on,

but he made a problem and went right to the "solution" of calling the police to deal with a black man.

[Happy Hoosier]

46. FWIW, the police did right in this case....

.... they told the student that while they are required to remove him, they did not think it was justified and told the student he should file a complaint.

The professor wrote the student an apology and the University called the professor's actions "unjustified." My wife is a professor at this University, btw. I expect more fallout form this.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

53. Imagine being "required" to remove someone from a classroom for no reason whatsoever, other than

the person with the most power in the room said so.

[Happy Hoosier]

56. Well, I can say this...

Since my wife had an incident with an unruly/abusive student, I am glad that they have such a policy. unjustified removals can be addressed later.

[rownesheck]

6. The thing that always aggravated me about some professors

is some would say they would drop you from their class if you missed a certain number of days. I'm paying for the class! I should be able to show up or not! Some professors do seem to be control freaks. What do they care if I'm there or not? It was always annoying when I got one of those jerks.

[a la izquierda]

8. I tell my students I don't care if they show up or not..

they're grown adults.

[SWBTATTReg]

40. Absolutley right. They are fully grown adults, fully capable of making decisions by themselves ...

etc.
Sounds like the instructor had a thing for the student and lost control when the student didn't move. Sounds like an anger management issue, which no instructor should have, especially in the classroom.

I've taught but it was in a different environment, in a corporate environment, so in theory, I had more control of the students (e.g., talk to their bosses if I needed to, which I never had to, thank goodness).

[melm00se]

21. Some school have

this policy that if you miss X number of classes you get dropped.

Some classes have audience participation portion of the grade.

in both cases it is embedded in the syllabus.

[Happy Hoosier]

57. Well.....

Some universities do have attendance policies. When I was in grad school, you were permitted 4 absences. More than that required coordination with the professor and department. AT BSU, at least in the English Department, it's 6 classes for a 3/week class and 4 for a 2/week class.

Yes, you are paying. But it's also true that professors need not spend time on students who do not care enough to show up with some regularity. Many classes have significant participation components, and it's impossible to pass if you miss a lot of classes.

[IronLionZion]

7. WTF is wrong with people?

The professor may have committed a crime here and needs to face some legal consequences, not the student.

[Miguelito Loveless]

9. So "learning while Black"

is now a crime if you fail to follow the Massah’s orders immediately and without question.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

11. Fuck that professor, Christ.

[marble falls]

12. Unfreaking believable. I'll go out on a limb and assume. The guy who origionaly took Benson's ...

seat was white or on one of the teams, the Professor is white, and Benson isn't.

[jimfields33]

31. The teacher is a man from Iran shaheen borna

Not sure where race of teacher comes in. Should not matter regardless as no mater she was wrong.

[Loki Liesmith]

52. Lol you fell off that limb didn't you?

[SallyHemmings]

13. Time for the Professor to go

I am so tired of stupid white people weaponizing the police because a brown person doesn't do what is demanded.

The Professor should suffer some financial consequences.

[Jedi Guy]

26. Your assumption is incorrect in this instance.

The professor is not white. He is from Iran, so I would guess he's Persian.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

44. OK, but thats not to say there isnt some chauvinism going on in his brain - educated

Persian men with PhD's (and a lot of family wealth) are perfectly capable of being racist/classist in their own way - will have likely absorbed steereotypes about black African Americans from having been here.

[marble falls]

14. the prof ...

?resize=1200%2C675

https://heavy.com/news/2020/01/shaheen-borna/

More about Dr Shaheen

Shaheen Borna is originally from Iran. According to a 2015 news release about Ball State’s Center for International Development, Borna immigrated to the United States in 1970 as a college student. The article mentioned that Borna has returned to Iran only twice since moving to the U.S., but that his wife visited more frequently to see family members.

Borna earned an MBA from Florida State University in 1979, according to his Ball State bio. He began teaching at the university in 1983. Borna’s work has been published in numerous trade publications and his bio adds that he is a “member of the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, and Mid-American Journal of Business.”

Borna also appears to be outspoken on the campus. In 2017, he submitted an opinion article to the student newspaper about Ball State’s decision to implement a new slogan, “We Fly.” Borna explained that he believed the university was wasting its money on the marketing campaign. ” Is it wise to allocate $1 million of Ball State University’s resources for a vacuous new tagline such as ‘We Fly,’ and at the same time lowering the water pressure throughout the campus to save money?”



It sounds more like it got out of hand and the campus police added to the situation instead of defusing it.

[Lulu KC]

20. Well, I do agree with him on the "We fly" part

but this seat thing is absurd, unkind, and just plain cray cray.

[MineralMan]

16. My reaction would have been, "Please do call the police."

"When they arrive you can explain your strange demand."

[TeamPooka]

36. Campus police are usually horrible rent a cop racists.

[marble falls]

37. Bingo. Wannabes who can't catch a gig with a city or county force.

[Chemisse]

18. This professor sure backed himself into a corner.

He insisted the student move and then his pride wouldn't allow him to relent.

As a high school teacher I learned pretty quickly, don't give a mandate you're not willing to enforce all the way. And so, don't give ridiculous mandates. Ask yourself, is that the hill you really want to die on? (Visualizing how you will explain your stance to the principal or the parents can really put things in perspective).

Professors are not used to dealing with noncompliance or disrespect so don't have the skills to manage it well to avoid fruitless confrontations.

[marble falls]

38. Thats a good insight for parents, too. Do not implement seat of the pants rules you ...

can't or won't enforce.

[LuvNewcastle]

19. I think I would have left, gone down to the registrar's office,

and dropped that class. I couldn't take a class from some nutty professor who calls the police on students who won't sit in the right chair.

[cp]

22. Student should get full credit for the class

without having to attend any further classes (or be moved with all credits intact into another analogous class, if there is one).

[Sparko55]

23. It's F*#king INDIANA that's why

Enough said.

A 36 year on the job tenured business prof with pension plan secured discovers his inner Trump. Probably goes to rallies in surrounding states wearing "Gobermint keeps ur hands off my Medicare" t shirt.

Because at the end of the day It's INDIANA .

[Happy Hoosier]

58. With all due respect....

.... do you know the professors? My wife is a Professor here and I can assure you this university is a blue dot in a sea of red. Now the business school.... that's another story. But don;t paint all of Indiana with that red brush. There are those of us here fighting the good fight.

[Arthur_Frain]

24. In all honesty I didn't read the full article.

There may be a back story here that we know absolutely nothing about. CNN wants eyes on screen though.

[grumpyduck]

33. Yeah, I agree that there's probably a back story that the MSM doesn't think will get people riled up

When I was in college, there were no assigned seats. We just found an empty one and parked, and it was a matter of when we arrived in class. If someone "took" (so to speak) our favorite seat, we just found another one. The prof didn't need to ask us to find another one. But then again we all behaved like adults.

If anything, it was the professor who disrupted the class, not the student.

So yeah, I suspect there's more to this.

[Fiendish Thingy]

34. What university has assigned seating?

What action did the police take?

[TeamPooka]

35. Sue the prof and the college.

[dalton99a]

39. And he will be known as the idiot professor

[iluvtennis]

41. Ridiculous. Now, sitting while black is a crime. nt

[YOHABLO]

42. And here lies the problem with educators. Some are just very strange.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

43. WHY DIDNT STUDENTS walk out? This is ridiculous. Its the PROFESSOR

who disrupted the class. The students should have spoken up and demanded that the professor get back to the lecture and stop making a scene.

I must be psychic - Its getting so I can read titles and know exactly what it is, that its a person of color getting harrassed or killed for no reason.

[whopis01]

60. Other students stayed to help defend Benson when the police arrived

Much better decision than simply walking out.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

61. per article Benson left classroom & presumably the bldg. IMHO everyone else should have walked out.

nt

[WhiskeyGrinder]

51. Professor apologizes, college president apologizes...what exactly would you be waiting for to decide

this was not an overreaction from the professor at the very least?

"Awfully whiney." "He's clearly milking the situation."

It's like you haven't seen what the cops have done to black people in this country, or followed how the white supremacy weaponizes the concept of a police force.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

55. "College administrators always apologize."

Maybe they're milking it.

[Happy Hoosier]

59. The Professor just lost his cool.

He escalated way too early. He apologized so quickly because the University told him too, I think, and he realized he done fucked it up.

The professor was getting NO back-up, not even from his own department. It was pretty clear he went from 0 to WTF in 4 seconds.

[lapfog_1]

48. I taught college for 4 years

I was happy that my students actually showed up. I certainly didn't give a rats ass where they decided to sit.

They are freaking college students... They or their parents PAID my salary.

[Mr.Bill]

49. In 1971 I entered Community College.

On the first day of one of my classes the teacher presented a seating chart that told everyone where to sit. She actually seated us boy, girl, boy, girl. At the second meeting of the class, the teacher was a bit late, and one of the students went up to the blackboard and wrote "Any teacher who uses a boy girl seating chart in a college class is a fucking idiot."

When the teacher arrived she read what was on the board, said nothing and erased it. She never mentioned the seating chart again. It was a Sociology class, so I've always wondered if she was doing an experiment of some kind.

[McCamy Taylor]

50. WTF?