Karin's Legal Battle with Student Stalker

NOTE:

The cover pic is part of many posts made this past week by the man I got a PPO on and which directly refers to things I taught in my ENG101 class in October.

All,

Please share this Go Fund Me if you feel comfortable. Long read here, but I feel like if I'm going to ask for help with my legal fees I need to justify it. I'm already 2k in and just got the bill for 4700 more, all to deal with a student stalker who fought a PPO, so 7k total. I'm 4 months and 2 hearings in on this. His packet of "evidence" was thick because he wrote serial killer notes all over every assignment I gave them. My packet was also thick because the guy has been posting terrifying stuff on his public Facebook. All of this adds up to a lot of billable hours.

What happened --

I just started my new job this fall. It was exciting for me to move into a new office and meet new people. By week 1 of the semester, I was receiving bizarre messages from one of my students. He's a 52-year-old, ex-National Guard, biker dude. He first emailed me at my Gmail to tell me all about his poetry, his IBDM page and his writing interests -- he writes poetry and erotica and said his work has been compared to Emily Dickinson, and lots of other info. When I told him not to email me at my Gmail, he shifted over to my work email. He sent me intensely personal emails, telling me all about his friends dying, his mother dying during Covid, his newborn granddaughter dying, his brain injury, and everything else about his life. This was all before week 2 of class. I would respond as briefly as possible to his emails so as to find a balance between acknowledging him and keeping him at arm's length. It didn't work. He just kept with the lengthy and regular emails. I've been teaching for 20 years and have never received this many emails from a student, not even ones I advised.

In class, he was aggressive and argumentative, though. When I tried to talk to the class about the difference between opinion/academic argument, he started interrupting, raising his voice, talking about how people are all different and in some countries they don't even read left to right. It was weird.

When I had the students read three pieces written by three authors on the subject of climate change in order to discuss credibility, audience, and purpose, he turned red, started arguing with me about how we shouldn't be reading this material. One piece was written by Republican heads of the EPA. One was by NASA. One was by Greta Thunberg. The idea was to talk about the different degrees of credibility, audiences, tones, purposes, etc. He took over the class and lectured me and the students about how we should all be reading Wayne Dyer, a self-help guru. All the while he was emailing me personal emails, sometimes several times a day.

When I sent out my yearly suicide prevention email and mentioned the importance of looking out for one another and shared my brother's story, he emailed me that he wanted to give me a "bear hug", asked if I had read his self-published book of poetry about suicide, then followed up with a poem he found about a husband and wife who argued all the time written from the perspective of the husband. In the poem the speaker talks about how the husband and wife will get along when they're both dead and buried next to one another. It was bizarre.

Mind you, this is my first semester at my new institution, and I was a few weeks into classes. I was trying to just get through the semester with the guy because I knew if I said anything to him he would escalate and make the next 11 weeks hell.

He objected to reading three pieces from three authors two of whom are people of color because he deemed the pieced to be "racial", never mind the fact that they were just literacy narratives in which the authors talk about their experience with literacy and learning.

The worst was when I had the students read a piece by Ta'Nehisi Coates in response to a problematic piece by a guy named Gene Marks. They're both great for rhetorical analysis discussions. He yelled at me in class, took control of the class for over 5 minutes and ultimately forced me to stop class before coming up to me after class and continuing to yell at me. He was enraged that anyone would dare read the Gene Marks piece as racist and insisted that Coates was a Black Panther because in a different piece he refers to attending Howard and reading many thinkers and writers, including Malcom X. He lectured me and the class that we should be reading about LIGHT not DARK and positivity not race. When I say lectured, I mean raised his voice, smacked the table in front of him, just generally raged.

I mean this is college and we have to be able to talk about rhetoric in a composition class. On one powerpoint slide I had two positions on the same issue. He wrote indoctrination next to it in his evidence packet. I was literally saying that we can have opinion about anything but what makes it educated or scholarly is pointing to the logical connections and evidence. I gave TWO opposing positions on the same topic and he was enraged because the topic was gun control. But again, I made a point of saying either position can be a valid position if you can back it up and make a clear argument.

I had enough. I told him there was a formal mechanism for complaints if he felt that was necessary and encouraged him to use it. I just couldn't deal with it in class anymore. I spoke with my acting dean and let her know that I was concerned and wanted her to know that I was having problems with him. It was embarrassing to complain about a student so soon, but the guy was scary and disruptive.

Before we could do anything, he escalated. He sent me an email that included pictures of my old home, my current home, my ex-husband's picture, my dead brother's obit, my old landlord's employment info, a poem of mine that he approved of because it was "full of light", and various other things. In the email, he talks about sharing a birthday with my dead brother. He asks whether I teach what I teach because of "Matt and his book" or because of "James's job." James was my landlord three years ago. I had no idea who he was referring to until I saw the screenshot with his full name and info about his employment working for child welfare. He also included childhood pics of himself. It's a terrifying email.

After I received that, I went back to the original email he sent me and discovered a bio where he describes being a member of the Michigan Militia. Great. Just great. He had talked openly about his brain injuries and love of guns, too, all while quoting the Bible constantly.

I contacted the school. I sent them every email and Canvas comment exchanged. They removed him from my class, investigated it, then about a week later lifted his suspension and simply gave him a written warning and code of conduct violation. In the meantime, I got a PPO on him, his guns were confiscated, and he began making veiled threats online. The PPO was granted, but the judge indicated it was only to protect me at my home not work. I assume since it was issued ex parte the judge didn't feel comfortable keeping him from his classes. I believe that's why the school decided to let him stay with only a code of conduct violation. This meant I went to work every day not knowing whether he would be in the library or halls or parking lot.

He also filed a formal complaint against me and included in his complaint that I had them read material that was racial and on topics like climate change.

A friend of mine started monitoring his Facebook profile since I had to immediately block him. In the course of one day, he changed his Facebook profile 5 times to make progressively more violent threats like -- "Complaint Department -- Be careful what you wish for" with a picture of a big bear trap, "I want you to see it coming" with a picture of cammo paint, and other fairly obvious threats. I took the kids to a hotel that night. Jordon put Ring cameras up around the house.

I told my work that I would not be on campus on days when I didn't teach. They agreed. That was the extent of their support. They told me they would not be helping me with legal fees as this was a private matter, never mind the fact that I didn't know this guy in my personal life. I was told I couldn't speak about any of this to anyone on campus.

He appealed the code of conduct violation and lost the appeal. That was one small glimmer of hope.

But he also fought the PPO. In his packet of information, he included MORE internet finds on me, including the transcript of a radio show that was done about my brother when he died. He refers to my brother by his first name throughout the packet, as if he knew him, even though I never once referred to him by name.

His packet for the hearing included page after page of pictures and newspaper articles about my activism. He included a screen shot of my daughter participating in a rally in BG way back in like 2011. He included a screenshot of my marriage announcement and noted that I was marrying a student. (Matt was listed as a student/instructor because he was getting his PhD at the time). All of this, I suppose, to somehow justify his behavior. He wrote "Marxism" "Anti-Fa" "Radical" next to things in my syllabus or assignments that I assure you were nothing more than your basic composition assignments, the same ones I've used for years. If ANYTHING in the reading had to do with anything he found remotely "racial" or "political" he would write something next to it.

During the first hearing, he interrupted the judge several times, tried to chat up my lawyer, and insisted he was being victimized. There was so much evidence the judge scheduled a second hearing.

He's also continued to post things on his public Facebook about how he was mistreated, and his guns were taken away unfairly and how he's going to smack the evil out of demons etc. He is REALLY triggered by the existence of trans people, something that never came up in class but clearly takes up a lot of his focus, and is very vocal about how he's NOT an ally. He's just an all-around special guy.

The second hearing was nuts. He is very good at being 100% confident regardless of how nutty he is. He interrupted a lot but did the wholesome apologetic routine -- Oh, shucks. I'm just a rough guy who doesn't know how this works. So sorry. When my lawyer asked him about the pictures he sent me, including the one of my brother, he talked at length about him as if he knew him. He looks up to Jeff. (he used his name) and thinks they are very similar. (Jeff was not a bigot or an idiot, so no) . It was very hard to hear him talk about Jeff. Very.

He lied on the stand and said he was never told that his code of conduct violation prohibited him from being near me. He lied about yelling in class. He said he wasn't in the Michigan Militia even though he scrubbed it from his bio and we had the old screenshots. He has since posted all about the 3 percenters. He lied a lot. But he was also able to honestly testify that my institution investigated him and lifted the suspension. As he said to the judge -- Why would they do that if they thought I was a threat? And I couldn't bring in any students as witnesses as I was told I couldn't speak about this with anyone at the school.

Since the second hearing, he has continued to post insane stuff that refers to himself as a demon hunter and refers to teachers that include material about climate change and other topics as "weeds." He has indicated that he will eventually talk about the crazy "Trump witch hunt" and his "stalker". He is nuts. When he had exchanges with the secretary at my lawyer's office, he would say things like -- "I'm sorry we had to meet this way." He went onto the Facebook page for my law firm and posted that the new lawyer (mine) did a good job and maybe he'll hire them for something soon. Then he posted about the Navy vs Army game and referred to another partner by name as if they knew each other. Really nutty stuff.

He's made vague threats that he might go to the press, which is laughable but also potentially damaging professionally. He has posted lies about what I actually did in class, that kind of thing.

He's now posting that he will be opening an "after hours shop" in my town even though he lives 30 minutes away. He likely won't, but it's him continuing to focus on me. He has posted that he needs blood for experiments... just insanity.

So, I'm here knowing that this man is still a student at my institution, and my institution did very little to support me or protect me. It was essentially, you can park in the visitor spots at the front of the building and let us know if he contacts you.

My second hearing was on Dec 13th. I found out Jan 3rd that the judge denied his appeal of the PPO and it stands, and the judge made it very clear he cannot contact me again. If he does, we're right back at the courthouse with another request for a PPO. I see this as a win, but it's a costly one. The lawyer had to attend two hearings, one of which was multiple hours. It was a 2K retainer and now another 4700 dollars. Lawyers are expensive for a reason, and I'm very glad I had one in those hearings, but 7k is a huge amount of money to me.

Monitoring his page has become a necessity as he seems completely bonkers and dangerous. The other day he changed his profile to private and posted only one thing that was public -- a video link to a YouTube tutorial on making a gun. He wrote that bans are useless because guns are easy to make. Keep in mind, he currently has no guns because of the ppo. So there's that.

The other day, he changed his profile pic to a picture of him in my classroom from last semester, wrote about how different school is now and how he has survived death, is living in pain, and "cannot be broken only killed" and posted something like 13 songs as comments, many with violent themes including this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPoIerPQujA . I'm not usually upset by that kind of thing or particularly sensitive to it, but in this context it's terrifying.

I should also say that I am usually very understanding when it comes to mental illness, childhood trauma, and brain injuries. I get that those things change behavior. This guy is a danger to me and the kids, so I have no more sympathy to give. He is aggressive, irrational, and dangerous. This PPO won't change any of that significantly, but it now makes it even easier to deal with any future harassment should he choose to go that route. And my guess is he will.

All of this is to say that I am posting a GoFundMe me to help pay for a small win related to a four-month nightmare that may or may not be over.

I know everyone is struggling right now. I completely get it if people can't help out. I just know this is money I don't have to spend on this.

Thanks for reading, folks.

Karin