Starting last year during a pro vaccine mandate rally at Penn State University Park there arose an issue over a confrontation. What happened for this confrontation to arise was that a student was counter protesting inside of the crowd of near the hub. The confrontation itself was the teacher trying to rip the student’s sign from his hand. The small confrontation ended rather quickly with the outcome just being the student getting a bloody nose (not from getting punched or anything just falling apparently) and some additional people telling the counter protester to leave. The result of all of this was the teacher getting fired and the student did not recieve any formal punishment from the university.

To give more context and story to the situation and the what happened afterwards, we need to know who everybody is and what they did and what happened afterwards. To start, the teacher was Oliver Baker who is a tenure track professor of English and African American studies. He was in attendance at the pro vaccine mandate rally in front of Old Main last year(2021). The counter protester was a student named Avi Rachlin. Prior to the incident that went down neither of them had any history together that we(the public) know about at least. Avi was carrying around a sign that had memes that were suppose to discredit the message of the pro mandate people in attendance. In addition, Avi was reportedly walking around and bumping into people at the event, and he was just being a nuisance all around. Professor Baker eventually had enough and tried to take the sign out Avi’s hand which led to Avi falling down and yelling. Avi got back up a second later with a bloody nose from falling. That was the end of the confrontation on that day, but the consequences of it is what makes everything more intriguing. After this all transpired, Oliver Baker was taken to court on the counts of simple assault, disorderly conduct, and harassment. He was acquitted of all charges following the altercation. However, Penn State University still went ahead with their decision and decided to terminate the professor in the near future. Currently, Oliver Baker is currently still teaching at the university, but he was placed on leave during the investigation and trial. The most interesting part is on the history following the student. The student(Avi Rachlin) already had a very controversial history here at Penn State University. A good chunk of the students history came to light following the confrontation at the the vaccine mandate rally. Students held a small protest to have Avi Rachlin expelled from Penn State on the grounds that he was producing an unsafe environment for other students. There was also a petition that received over hundreds of votes (over a thousand as of the time of me writing this) to have him expelled. I do not know whether or not Avi was expelled or if he left Penn State on his own accord, but the sins of his past were revealed on the petition. The petition brings a plethora of very serious charges against Avi. These charges include: multiple accounts of racism, being a white supremacist, anti-LGBTQ+, advocating for sexual violence against women, and saying he would shoot up a school. The petition includes all the evidence to back up the claims that they put out concerning Avi. Avi was/is the leader of the club called PSU resistance and there are clips of him online talking with various councils concerning covid masking. In addition, he has a youtube channel that was used against him as well. Avi’s claims against him were not made without merit, and there is proof for all the claims made against him. Avi’s current status on him attending Penn State university is not known to me, but if I were to guess I would say that he most likely left because it would be hard to maintain a social image after a controversy as big as the one he faced went down.

The whole state of this situations brings up many great questions that may be applied to future situations. The first question I think of is do other students have as much of a say as they would like to believe whenever it comes to expressing who or who they do not want to attend the University. Naturally, there would have to be very good reasons and evidence to expel or prevent a student from coming here. As we(the students) have witnessed from this event, it can be reasoned to the Avi himself lacks the Penn State values and that he violated/ broke the student code of conduct. Yet, we have not received any update concerning the fate of Avi and whether or not he still attends Penn State. In addition, this situation also raises the question concerning whether the students have as much of a voice as they hope concerning Penn State policies and choices. Despite the large amount of student support for professor Oliver Baker in the forms of petitions, public protests, and walkouts for the teacher, there was no change on the University’s decision. The University has not overturned their previous decision despite the clear disapproval from a pretty surprising amount of students. Finally, this situation also raises the question of how useful is petitioning, protests, and walkouts for getting the results the people are asking for. Obviously, throughout history we can see its effectiveness in politics and various other parts of society. I want to bring this to a smaller scope however and just look at this situation and how much these methods worked out. Looking at the results, we can see that the desired results did not come about, but they did spread the message a very considerable amount. So, is there a better way to get what students want from the University than what I have previously listed?

Sources:

https://www.collegian.psu.edu/news/penn-state-professor-found-not-guilty-for-physical-altercation-with-counterprotestor-at-vaccination-rally/article_12005a58-40df-11ec-85c1-dfd35774f8d9.html

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/01/18/penn-state-seeks-fire-professor-over-vaccine-rally-tussle

https://www.pyriscence.ca/home/oliverbaker

https://www.collegian.psu.edu/news/campus/petition-to-expel-penn-state-student-avi-rachlin-collects-over-600-signatures/article_ea2c3002-8142-11ec-ace8-b3cede080e28.html

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/penn-state-admin-expel-dangerous-and-threatening-student-avi-rachlin/