Middlebury College announced on Tuesday that it has completed the process of sanctioning students who participated in the disruptions of Charles Murray’s lecture.
According to the school, 67 students have been disciplined for their roles in the protest that obstructed Murray’s speech, but the police department failed to identify any specific individuals responsible for putting a professor in a neck brace.
“Forty-one students received sanctions from the College administration for participating in the first stage of the disruptive protest in Wilson Hall,” the school reported in a news release. “The remaining 26 students, who faced more serious consequences for actions in the hall and outside the building, were sanctioned by the College’s Community Judicial Board, which held group and individual hearings in May.”
The sanctions ranged from “probation to official College discipline, which places a permanent record in the student’s file,” according to the college.
The punishments were characterized by former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, an alumnus of Middlebury, as a slap on the wrist. “Middlebury slaps everybody on the wrist. A letter in the files. No one IDd who engaged in violence. The mob wins,” he tweeted in response to the news.
Given the severity of the disruption, which put Professor Allison Stanger in the hospital with a neck brace, many observers hoped those responsible would, at the very least, face harsher punishments such as suspensions or expulsions.
But in the same release announcing its punishments, the school noted that the Middlebury Police Department also closed its investigation into the violent portion of the protest, concluding “it has been unable to identify any specific individual responsible for the injuries sustained by Stanger.”
A media release available for download on the department’s website confirms that the “investigation did not identify any specific individual who hurt Allison Stanger as she and her party left McCullough Student Center on their way to a car that was to transport them from the venue.”
“On consultation with the Addison County State’s Attorney it was determined that there was insufficient information to charge any specific person who participated in damaging the car or interfering with or blocking the car’s progress as it exited the parking lot,” the release said.
As the Washington Examiner reported previously, the school was under pressure from progressive professors to go easy on the student perpetrators. In response to an article in the student newspaper reporting on the efforts of those professors, Murray himself tweeted, “Now we know. Middlebury to students: Shutting down speakers you don’t like is okay. We’ll cave.”
The Middlebury news release works hard to convince readers that students suffered the appropriate punishments, even carefully noting that official college discipline can impact graduate school prospects. But that consequence, minor in and of itself, was the harshest fate students met. It is unlikely that any of the school’s discipline will deter further disturbances, or justly impact the students who participated in the protest.
“Middlebury’s commitment to open debate & free speech remains to be seen. I hope they invite several conservatives [to give] speeches next year,” Ari Fleischer wrote.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
