This student spoke out when her professor played an anti-Trump video in class. Here's what happened next.
A Clemson University English class recently played the controversial 2017 Julius Caesar production that apparently depicts President Trump being stabbed.
'I do not agree with our current President in America, but I would never disrespect him,' the student told Campus Reform.
When a video showing the stabbing of a lookalike Donald Trump was played during an English class at Clemson University, one student decided to speak out.
Clemson University professor Elizabeth Rivlin showed a clip of an actor playing former President Donald Trump being stabbed during New York City’s 2017 ‘Shakespeare in the Park’ production of Julius Caesar during her English 4110-Shakespeare class.
“And then I spoke up,” Clemson sophomore Alivia Grace Talley said to Campus Reform.
Talley told Campus Reform that Rivlin paused the video after several minutes and asked students for their opinion. The feedback was overall “positive” from the students, the student revealed.
“This is ridiculous. This is a Shakespeare class,” Talley recounted saying in class. “Why on earth are we watching videos from 2017 of a former President being disrespected and mocked? I don’t care what you think of a President, it’s disrespectful and dishonoring to go as far as to stab him in a play.”
English 4110 is a required course for all English majors that studies “selected tragedies, comedies, and history plays of Shakespeare.”
“I do not agree with our current President in America, but I would never disrespect him. I would never go as far to support a group stabbing him to death on stage. In America, we honor and respect those in authority. We do not mock them. In America, we honor those who sacrifice - everyone from our military to our government - regardless of what we think,” she continued.
“Students chuckled at me, rolled their eyes, and continued to talk in support of the video my professor played,” Talley told Campus Reform.
When asked what the purpose of showing the video was, Talley told Campus Reform that the class is reading Julius Caesar and the professor wanted to “take Shakespeare plays and relate them to today.”
Talley said that this was the “final straw” for her, and she felt that she “had to say something and do something about it.”
The student decided to reach out to the English department chair, Will Stockton, to express her “frustration” and belief that the video was “irrelevant” to the class.
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“I am paying thousands of dollars for a poor education. And I am not the only college student in America experiencing this. It’s ridiculous that I walked into a Shakespeare class and was shown a video of a lookalike Donald Trump being stabbed in 2017,” Talley wrote to Stockton in an email obtained by Campus Reform.
Stockton responded to her email but Talley said that it “totally disregarded” her concerns.
“Good Shakespeare teachers, which Dr. Rivlin absolutely is, work to demonstrate Shakespeare’s contemporary relevance,” Stockton wrote in his reply, which Campus Reform obtained.
”I am hearted to hear that you shared your thoughts, even if your classmates disagreed with you,” he continued.
Talley shared with Campus Reform that she will “always defend the principles America was founded upon - one of those being that we honor and respect those in authority.”
“We do not make immature, disrespectful, and ridiculous videos and comments about the President of our Country. We do not go as far as to make a video of him being stabbed,” Talley continued.
She concluded by stating, “I am concerned, frustrated, and heartbroken for my generation and the state of this Country. I will do everything I can, no matter where I am, to help America continue to be the best country in the world.”
Campus Reform reached out to Clemson, Rivlin, and Stockton for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
