ALBANY — Two weeks after University at Albany students shouted down a conservative speaker, an adjunct professor was arrested on charges of disrupting an anti-abortion event.
This time, students were sticking to traditional counter-protest activities. University administrators handed out a pamphlet to students at the event last Wednesday, explaining appropriate free speech behavior. Among the items listed: People can’t obstruct someone else’s free speech.
Students began chanting “my body, my choice” and other abortion rights-related comments but did not stop anti-abortion group Created Equal from broadcasting their message with posters and a large electronic display, said Created Equal President Mark Harrington. The display showed footage of the remains of fetuses acquired from medical waste facilities after abortions. The images were described as the “reality of abortion” and “what abortion does to preborn babies.”
Then sociology professor Renee Overdyke, 57, unplugged Created Equal’s electronic display, said UAlbany Police Chief Paul Burlingame.
Overdyke could not be immediately reached for comment.
On the day of the event she then appeared to lay down by the plug and was dragged to her feet and then carried away by five officers, according to a video that the anti-abortion group posted.
In the video, students could be heard chanting, “Free Renee!” and telling police that she was a professor.
One student shouted, “We have a right to free speech!”
Burlingame said Overdyke made no attempt to speak with the anti-abortion group or organize speech in opposition to the anti-abortion group’s message.
“It was the adjunct faculty member’s purpose to get directly to the plug,” he said.
She was arrested on three charges: disturbing a lawful assembly,…
Read the full article here