Free speech, antisemitism and potential police misconduct come to the forefront after two long days in April

BY: JACOB POLITTE
Managing Editor

On Thursday, April 11 and Monday, April 15, a religious protester who came to campus left many students and faculty upset and dissatisfied with the college’s overall response. Adjacent to the situation, a separate incident has left at least one Meramec police officer under investigation and various students on campus calling for their and another officers’ removal.

THE INCIDENTS

April 11

Around 11:30 am, a large crowd gathered in the Student Center Quad, their attention drawn to a man spewing anti-semitic, anti-LGBTQ rethortic. The man, who livestreams his demonstrations on YouTube under an account called “Kingdom Reconcilers” was in the Quad verbally confronting students, which the college says is unfortunately protected by free speech laws.

For two hours, the man had a continuous presence in the Quad, going back and forth with students, including Zainab Ahmad, who wasn’t sure she was even heading into campus that day after Eid Mubarak celebrations the day prior.

“On Wednesday, I was celebrating with my family,” Ahmad said. “And so on Thursday, I was actually not going to come to class, I was very tired. And I hadn’t talked to my professor. But […] I had a lab assignment due that day.”

Ahmad said she entered campus that day from the parking lot adjacent to the Science buildings when she noticed the commotion.

“And I just heard a lot of noise, which you don’t normally… I feel like you don’t hear that much noise on our campus to begin with,” she said. “And then I just saw a whole bunch of other Muslim students gathered and then closer to where that guy was standing. I saw just like a ton of all different kinds of students standing.

Ahmad said that during her years on campus, she was used to people in the Quad coming and interacting with students, but this man targeted her specifically after seeing her hijab.

“There are preachers or even political solicitors that come on campus, so [that’s] nothing new,” Ahmad said. “But as I was walking by, I was getting ready to go towards Science East, and he just started pointing and yelling at me, and I heard him say that all Muslims are pedophiles. And that’s just like… that’s not something I take lightly [where] I’m like, ‘Well, I’m just gonna go to class now.’ And so I kind of turned my head and I saw that he was pointing at me and some other girls who had hijabs. So I pulled out my phone, [and] I started recording.”

Ahmad’s video on Tik Tok regarding the incident has amassed over 1,000 views and counting as of press time. In the video, she is shown debating the protester.

“I walked up to him and I very calmly and I asked him, I was like, ‘Can I ask you a question?’ And immediately, I mean, he was already very hostile towards me. And this is the part that I have like fully recorded,” she said. “And I asked him, ‘If you are so devoutly Christian, can you explain the contradictions between the denominations of Christianity?’ To which he started attacking our beloved prophet and Islam. He started saying Muhammad was a pedophile, all Muslims are pedophiles [and said] ‘Why don’t you go talk to your community because they’re very wicked, and they’re all terrorists.’ And I remained very calm.”

She continued, “I was like, ‘My community’s very lovely.’ And then […] he was trying to egg me on. And he was like, ‘Oh, why are you such a tyrant? Why are you…’ You know, all these [statements], he was trying to get a reaction out of me. But he didn’t, because I’m not someone that you can make very angry very quickly. And again, I’m one of the older students on campus. So I was very calm. And then a lot of people started watching at that point, and were seeing that I was very calm and my reaction to him. And I think that wasn’t going the way he wanted it to go. I think he wanted a reaction.”

A student, Emily Hall, was recorded on the protester’s livestream charging at the man yelling “Shame!” before being taken away by campus police. That footage has been edited out of the protester’s livestream after the fact, but KMOV did obtain footage of the incident before it was edited out. Hall was not able to be reached for this story as of press time, but she did attend one of the campus forums on April 16 where she spoke about her experience.

April 15

The protester returned to campus again the following Monday, and the response to his presence drew a large crowd and many visceral reactions.

Ahmad was made aware that he was on campus, and chose not to directly interact with him further. She wasn’t surprised that he returned.

“I want to say I was surprised, but honestly, I’m not,” she said. “I think part of the reason he came back is because he got the reaction he wanted. I think he got the news coverage. […] He probably felt like there were words left unsaid, so he wanted to come back and insult more people.”

Although Ahmad did not seek out the protester directly, he acknowledged her by name after seeing her on the sidelines. 

“I did not personally engage with him, and that was very intentional. And I was already nervous to begin with, because, you know, the first thing that goes through my mind is okay, did he see the news story, he now knows my name. Before he just knew where I went to school, what time etc. So I was worried for my own safety.”

“But I have to walk through that quad to get to my class,” she said. “I could have tried to go through another building and then quickly, but then why am I on my own campus having to like dip and duck to avoid somebody who’s threatening my safety? So I went to my class and I didn’t engage initially.”

Jack Wight, who works in the Academic Success and Tutoring Center as a tutor, said his involvement in the situation came after the fact. He and Ahmad were both publicly doxxed by the protester.

“[…] The proselytizer was at the quad, yelled at my name and social media in front of a crowd of people and called me a homosexual,” Wight said. “Which is true, but imagining a scenario in which I was not out of the closet or or there were more homophobes around, what could that have led to?”

Ahmad was standing near STLCC’s Executive Director of Diversity and Inclusion D’Andre Braddix when the protester called her out by name.

“[The protester] kind of turned and when he saw me, he started announcing on the megaphone that ‘Oh, and then we have this Muslim pedophile here who said a lot of lies on the news about me,” Ahmad said. He was specifically targeting me. Dr. Braddix is a very nice person, he just kind of turned to me and he’s just like, ‘Don’t pay attention.’ It’s alarming and startling to be called out like that, in front of my entire campus.”

The protester remained on campus for at least two hours on both days he was present. Some students and faculty attempted to deescalate the situation. At no point during either event did campus police officers make an effort to remove the protester, therefore not infringing on the protester’s free speech rights. However, they too became involved in the controversy that engulfed the campus in a different way.

THE POLICE

Adjacent to the April 11 incident, another situation developed when a student, Alaa Hamedi, approached a nearby Officer because he was concerned for the safety of his peers as well as himself as a result of the ongoing situation. 

Hamedi, who originally did not want to be publicly identified in KMOV’s reporting of the incident out of concern over further threats and harassment but decided to confirm his identity to The Montage, maintains that the officer he approached first was Officer Faulstich. Hamedi alleges in his account of events, posted to his Instagram account, that Faulstich told him “If you don’t like it, go somewhere else.” Hamedi said he was perplexed by that response, and asked Faulstich to repeat himself; Faulstich allegedly said “If you don’t like it, go back to your own country.”

Hamedi said he then approached Officer Ed Ucinski, who told Hamedi that Faulstich could “say whatever the fuck he wants.”

Hamedi reported the incident to the college. He also alleges that he was confronted in the Student Center on Monday, Apr. 15 by Officer Ucinski, and said that there were five witnesses to that confrontation. Wight said he had also heard about the confrontation, but was not a witness to it. 

The incident has opened up tensions within the campus community, with rumblings and some discussion of past police misconduct circulating around the student body.

Jack Wight also confronted administrators with some of these allegations during a session of the April 16 forum. At the time, Braddix had no response to the allegations. Wight, when speaking with The Montage, stood behind his forum comments, and revealed that some students have reached out to him directly with their own stories after seeing his Instagram posts.

“I have been very active on social media over this incident. My post is very visible. It’s what garnered immediate attention and it kind of went viral,” he said. “So there are a lot of people who reached out to me directly. Speaking on those previous allegations, I had one individual tell me that they have filed complaints and reports against Officer Ucinski. And I had another former student reach out. He did not file an official report but gave me a description that matched Faulstich and said that he walked in on a closed conversation that he was having and started spewing racial hate speech at them unprovoked.” 

“This brings up a lot of red flags,” Wight said. “As it is clear to me, not only by these reports, but just by what happened that there is no way that there haven’t been signs that these men are problematic, racist and potential threats to student safety. Without a doubt in my mind, there have been signs. And my question is, how have they gone under the radar? How have they gotten through the process when a report has been filed? And how were they hired in the first place?”

Ahmad said she also believes the officers should be removed.

“[For] a situation like this probationary action is not enough,” she said. “[The] police’s job is to keep students safe, keep the campus safe. And so this action made a lot of students feel unsafe. And if it is found that the way that we are seeing it is what actually happened, then? Absolutely. I don’t think that officer should be able to return to campus, let alone be armed on a campus.”

Ahmad also said that she wasn’t surprised at the alleged rhetoric.

“It concerns me, definitely. It concerns me. I don’t know if I would say it surprises me,” she said. “Unfortunately, I think like a lot of students, I don’t think my initial gut is always to, oh, just trust a security officer, just trust a police officer without doubt. And that’s not me trying to incite further distrust between campus police and students. But I just know that I myself have never experienced anything like that. I know there are a lot of students that like even, anonymously reached out to me [and] reached out to some of the other students that ‘I’ve had interactions with this officer as well’ or ‘I’ve had something happened to me on campus and an officer, like, did something similar or even worse.’ 

She continued, “I didn’t realize that even though they’re employed by the college, they’re not. They’re somewhat of a separate entity. I think going forward, there needs to be DEI training or something like that. They need to be more equipped to handle student diversity [and] situations like this, that, while they’re not super often, are common. They do happen. And when things like this happen, it can escalate really quickly. And their job is not to escalate it further. It’s really not.”

STLCC Police Captain Benjamin Talley could not comment on the ongoing specifics of the investigation, and thus would not confirm if Faulstich and Ucinski were the specific officers under investigation. Instead, Talley gave the following written statement to The Montage on the afternoon of April 24:

“The incident on the Meramec campus that occurred on April 11, 2024, is being investigated by the College. The actions of a member of the St. Louis Community College Police Department are being reviewed by the College’s Department of Human Resources. Until these investigations are completed, the STLCC Police Department will be unable to comment further.”

Braddix says that while the college will announce when the investigation concludes, they will not announce specific actions that those under investigation will be subjected to, including in documents that can be normally found within STLCC’s Board Docs page.

“What I’ve been told is that we can notify the community that the investigation has concluded, but many specific actions would not be noted out of protection of the employee’s right to privacy,” Braddix said. “We would not be able to share any specifics.”

On the same matter, Moore-Davis said, “I think at this point, students would have to trust us that we have taken these allegations very seriously. And they really are being investigated. And if we find that those things, the things that we purport to value here at St. Louis Community College have been violated, then actions will be taken. But there are lines in which we can’t cross, because we have to protect that person’s rights as well. At the same time, we want to let the students know that we are taking it very seriously.”

Moore-Davis said she was also disheartened to learn of the allegations from students against officers that either went unresolved or were not previously reported.

“It is very concerning,” she said. “This is not the environment that we support on this campus. And I want students to know that my door is always open to hear them. And if and when it happens, I want them to come and let me know. And that I will take action as appropriate for the situations that are occurring on the campus. Because I don’t know unless they tell me and I want them to feel free to tell me there won’t be any ramifications for you because that is not the environment we have on this campus. That is not the people we hire. Of course, hiring is not a perfect process. But that is not the person that we hire on this campus. We support students, we believe that students come first and we want you to have a safe and secure environment for learning when you’re on this campus.”

THE RESPONSE

Dr. Braddix wants to make it clear that the college understands the frustration and discontent amongst the Meramec community, but that the college can not remove the “Kingdom Reconcilers” protester from campus because of his free speech protections, specifically those defined in a 2015 Missouri law called the Campus Free Expression Act. That law, among other things, designates public institutions as “Free Speech Zones.”

Students, however, say that the college’s response is insufficient. Wight, in particular, had strong and harsh words for the college.

“Nobody has reached out to me,” Wight said. “I have attempted… Actually, my voice has been heard loud and clear by the administration, multiple administrative members. And they, like pretty much anything else I’ve said about this, have politely told me that they’re not going to do anything about it. And that it’s my problem. They have not offered any sort of… they have not offered me any sort of protection, they have not reached out to be like, ‘how can we keep you safe in this situation?’ They have not proposed any sort of solutions. And they haven’t even asked me like, ‘Oh, are you okay?’ You know, not even that. Simply defensive rebuttals. There was actually administration present when this happened, and they told me that there’s nothing that they can do. And then if I’m having a problem to contact the local police department.”

Wight, when asked, elaborated that he was talking about the St. Louis County Police Department, not the STLCC Police Department.

Regarding the campus administration’s attempts to reach out, Moore-Davis said that she was not present on campus for the April 11 incident, as she was attending a PTK event in Columbia, Missouri. She also was not initially present on campus for the April 15 incident, having previously scheduled a personal day; she did make the trip to campus once she was informed of the events by Vice President Keith Ware, who also kept her informed of the situation as it unfolded the previous Thursday.

While Wight and Ahmad say that they have not heard directly from Moore-Davis, she said that some students have come to her office to discuss the matter with her, something she welcomes for those that feel they need to.

“There were some students that entered my office and I spoke to them directly,” she said. “And we had some conversations about that. However, I haven’t reached out to particular students, because we gave them various avenues to reach out. And I want them to understand that my door is open. But I didn’t want to reach out to them unless they wanted to have that conversation. So I want to give them the freedom to come and see me and to understand that Dr. Ware and myself are open to hearing what they have to say. But some of the students I know they also saw counseling after that event, after the events, I should say. And there were also other avenues that they also chose to vent their frustrations or to communicate their challenges with the situation.”

Moore-Davis also said that to her knowledge, no student had been disciplined by the college for their conduct with the protester. While Emily Hall was positively identified as the woman who charged at the man on April 11, The Montage was unable to identify the man who threw a water bottle at him on April 15.

Moore-Davis also spoke about some of the tone of the rhetoric that the protester spewed, saying it doesn’t reflect her own Christian values.

“Christianity is about love,” she said. “And when someone comes and the foundation is love, and they come in and spew challenging and difficult to digest [words] and things that do not align with that to other people of other races or of other religions or of other identities is just wrong. And it doesn’t reflect what they purport to come here to do. Because if you are purporting to be a Christian and bringing people to that, you bring people to love and you can never get people to love through hate.”

THE FORUMS

Following these events, Campus Forums were held at Meramec in the Humanities East building to address what happens and how the college is responding. The forums, which were hosted by Dr. Braddix and STLCC’s Title IX coordinator Shannon Nicholson, also were attended by Dr. Moore-Davis and Dr. Ware. In total, 125 people attended the forums across the two days they were held.

Braddix and Nicholson revealed during the forums that they were actually in the process of updating the guidelines for Campus Expression in the months before these incidents, and revealed a list of proposed restrictions they hope to finalize within the coming weeks. They took feedback received during the forums into consideration, and ended up modifying some of the guidelines as a result. However, they reiterated to all forum attendees that while they understand their frustrations, there is not anything they can do to remove him from campus, as his speech is protected under the 2015 law..

“I’ve worked in Texas, Florida, and now, St. Louis,” Moore-Davis said. “And in both those [first two] states, there were free speech zones. And individuals had to have permits before they could come on to the campus, and speak within those zones. That has since changed across all of those states. So now in public institutions, you can have a free speech zone, but you can’t relegate people to those zones for public speaking in public spaces. So I think that a part of the challenge now is having people really understand that being a public institution, our outdoors is public space, and anyone at any time may do that. The campuses can put parameters, you know, you can’t be here at midnight, and they wouldn’t want to be, because there is no audience here [at that time]. They usually understand the law, they understand how far they can go. And they come within those spaces the most public and for us, it is our quad, that’s the most public that students transcend all day long.”

Overall, Moore-Davis thought the forums went well, and believes the proposed guidelines are “a good first step” in minimizing the impact this particular kind of protester may have in the future on any STLCC campus.

“For the most part, I think that this is a good first step to making the changes that we need that will help us to deal with the things that we recently saw at Meramec,” she said. “And I don’t think that the other campuses have had the same issues.”

Nursing Instructor Stacie Harrison attended a session of the forums on the afternoon of April 16, and revealed she actually had a limited interaction with the same protester in October on campus. By the time she alerted campus administration to the situation, he was already packing up to leave campus.

Overall, she said that she left the forum having learned more about the college’s stance on the matter.

“I came in at a pretty heated part of a discussion where a student was feeling very hurt and affected by what happened on campus and was very passionately speaking about it,” Harrison said. “Once I kind of got to see the start of the presentation, I did really appreciate the education standpoint of ‘this is why we as a college couldn’t intervene. Here’s the law that I wasn’t actually aware of.’ But getting that background of ‘okay, here’s the legalities of why we can’t intervene. Here’s what we’re trying to work with.’ I appreciated that they did have that open communication.”

Despite coming away with that information, one aspect of the forums left her underwhelmed.

“I do wish that they could have told us more about the specifics that involved our officer,” Harrison said. “Just because we are a campus that is students first and value diversity, equity inclusion. And I don’t know what exactly was said by that officer, I don’t even know if that was the correct context. Or I’m… I don’t know, I want to give the benefit of the doubt that maybe it was just poor phrasing taken out of context, because I know that all of us have fallen victim to not [having] the most eloquent speech at times. So I’m hopeful that that’s the case. But I would like more information on that at least more transparency on [the matter]. Like, ‘here’s what the allegation is, here is what we know so far, here is the process of what’s going to come’ because I think if we had even more transparency, I think a few of those students would feel a little less hurt, at least that they’re being heard.”

Not all attendees left the forums with a positive outlook, including Wight.

“I found the forum frustrating,” Wight said. “I could see that Dr. Braddix and Shannon Nicholson were making an attempt at rectifying the situation. But in their own words, they heavily missed the mark. They missed the mark, where this should have been a situation where that was centered in hearing out the students’ issues, reaching out a helping hand, letting us know that we’re heard and were cared for and demonstrating what they’re going to do proactively. There was some of that, but the main plot of those forums was to tell us that this isn’t within their power. And it felt like damage control. And it felt like a PR thing. It didn’t feel like a space where they were there to genuinely express remorse and put a hand out for the students who have been affected by this trauma.”

Wight’s friend Aine Bradley, who was a witness to the April 15 incident and attended the forums, concurred with him.

“I totally agree with Jack on the fact that it is damage control,” Bradley said. “I think the university is well aware of the fact that they are doing too little too late, and are now just trying to clean up the mess that they’ve made, and try to control the damage to students. I think what they don’t understand is that damage is done. And that damage is still happening by letting that man come back on campus. That is just further exposing your students.” 

Bradley said that while she understood why STLCC specifically focused on the legality of the protester’s conduct, making it a center point of the presentation was a critical mistake. 

“I think what they presented about the legality issues with this was good,” she said. “I think that is a good standpoint to have, because I think that can be really difficult for students to understand, however, it should not have been the main point. The main point of that should be, let’s talk about how that made you feel. Let’s talk about if you feel safe on campus now, you know?”

Bradley said she appreciated the college informing students of resources at their disposal to help deal with their emotions regarding the situation, but she felt like the tone of the presenters took away from the seriousness of the matter.

“They were discussing how, you know, they obviously don’t need to have any sort of a heads up about people coming,” she said. “And they do not tell them that they’re coming. However, it just felt really almost demeaning to hear them talk about this in a very light tone, making jokes in between. I mostly was there in between groups actually. And they were talking about, you know, what they like to cook and stuff like that. It was just a light, not personal conversation. And it felt like as soon as that group session ended, it was like we had not just talked about something that was difficult and hard for students and traumatizing for students.”

Both Wight and Bradley feel that the college is not taking enough responsibility for the incidents, and instead shifting blame and responsibility onto others, including students and faculty.

“They also said that it’s not the police’s job to deal with this. They are trying to take the blame off of the police officers who were there that day not doing anything. And they said that they wanted faculty and staff members to be more on the forefront of deescalating,” Bradley said. “Why? Teachers are here to teach. Teachers are in class. They said that they want to create a response team of some sort. That I’m okay with, to have an Allocated Response Team. But to put this on to teachers and professors is disrespectful, in my opinion, to all that these teachers are responsible for. That is not their job to deescalate psychopaths that come onto our campus. [It’s] not in their job description.”

“We may not be able to remove men like this when they come to campus,” Wight said. “But it is our school’s responsibility to come up with creative solutions and protocols for when things like this happen, and a proper response to the trauma that our students endure, being proactive in caring for our students and reaching out to them. We want the officers removed. Both of them. [We want] extensive DEI training for police and a better vetting process.”

“I think it’s important to recognize that students come here to take classes, students come here to succeed,” Bradley said. “And students come here to move on from this university. And we all have lives outside of this university. We have jobs, we have families, some of us have kids, some of us have grandparents we take care of and we should not be responsible for creating change on this university campus. I think that we should be a part of it, we should be a helping hand. But we should be the response and not the call. The call should come from the university.”

THE COALITION

As a result of the incidents, Meramec students, including Wight, have organized the Student’s Anti-Discrimination Coalition. On their newly created Instagram page, this coalition says it plans to serve the following purposes:

• Advocating for students rights
• Speaking out against hate
• Championing community efforts for a campus in which we can all be supported and encouraged equally

Wight said the coalition is “a desperate attempt to make something out of this.” While Wight and Bradley are planning to move on to different institutions in the coming months, and were before the incident, both hope that the coalition will remain in place long after their departure.

“And as students have collectively come together to work towards a solution, my friends and I thought it’d be a good idea to make a coalition to hopefully have some sort of lasting system of student accountability, and a way for students to be able to hold administration accountable.”

“People who want to step up who are here next year, people who want to take what Jack and his friends have created, and take this baton on and carry it out would be great,” Bradley said.

With that being said, Wight had strong final words for the administration at large.

“The school needs to make sure that this never happens again,” he said.

THE ADMINISTRATION’S FINAL THOUGHTS

Despite the continued discontent, Dr. Moore-Davis and Dr. Braddix both reiterated that they are here for students.

“I want the student body to know that we sincerely care,” Moore-Davis said. “We care about them, we care about the environment that they’re in. And we just care about them personally. And I think in hearing some of the student voices, that they didn’t get a sense of that. That troubles me as well. But I do want them to know that we do care and our doors are open. And that is not simply a statement that I say my door is open to all of our students that are here. If there is something that is happening on the campus, if there is something that they would like to discuss with me at any point, I will make myself available for them.”

Dr. Braddix extended his sincere apologies to anyone affected by these events.

“To any members of our community who have been impacted by this divisive and hateful rhetoric,” he said, “I just want to extend my sincerest apologies and just say that I am so sorry. I understand you were here to seek an education or for my colleagues, you’re here to work. And to experience that, especially unexpectedly, I can imagine how jarring and unsettling that would be. But I do hope that individuals understand that we as a community, we respect you, we value you, we want you here, we support you. And we have this dual reality that we’re dealing with in the sense that we have this campus community that we’re seeking to create that’s extremely inclusive, welcoming and supportive of one another. But, we also have an obligation under the law to allow expressive activity to occur. And sometimes that’s going to be speech that we don’t agree with or that we find offensive and just know that person’s words and rhetoric doesn’t reflect the college and our sentiments or feelings or values.”