Mount Holyoke College placed their newly hired police chief, Daniel Hect, on administrative leave Wednesday after students complained about him liking conservative posts on Twitter.
According to Daily Wire, Hect announced that he was appointed as the Police Chief of Mount Holoke College and Smith College on February 6. Now, just two months later, Hect has been placed on administrative leave.
Daily Wire reports that after Hect was announced as the new Police Chief, students began to dig into his Twitter account. Some of the students seemingly found several tweets that Hect liked to be inappropriate. These tweets include one from the NRA wishing its followers “Merry Christmas” another from the NRA stating, “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns,” and several other tweets from President Trump regarding the current border crisis.
According to Daily Wire, a student pegged these tweets as hateful saying it is “unacceptable for someone in charge of keeping any community safe, let alone a campus as diverse as MHC's, to be publicly displaying his support for hateful regimes and organizations, as well as for individuals who demonize migrants from Mexico or other latin american (sic) nations.”
Then in March, Hect and the college’s administration held several events where students would be allowed to talk with Hect.
According to the school’s newspaper, the event was filled with “tension and tears.”
At the event, Hect noted that he did not necessarily support Donald Trump, but he felt as if he should like his tweets when he had done something well.
Hect said, “Donald Trump’s viewpoints do not represent our country very well… When [Trump] did something that I thought he did well, I wanted to like [his tweets in reference to those successes] in hopes to lead to more good behavior.”
Hect even added that he does not support Donald Trump.
Despite this, Hect was placed on leave as administrators fear that students will not be able to trust him. Hect’s suspension, which is being seen as the suppression of conservative thoughts on college campuses, comes following the signing of an executive order by President Trump protecting the freedom of speech at colleges and universities.
Hect’s suspension also comes in the wake of several other events that appear to target conservative thought.
According to the Daily Caller, a Missouri Western State University student engaged in a verbal confrontation with another student after she saw them wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. The incident – which was caught on camera – shows a police officer trying to calm the enraged student down to no avail. The student yelled at the officer, “It’s a symbol of white supremacy!”
She continued, “I don’t want to see that! I wake up every day and I see my people getting killed!”
The police officer urged the female student to “talk calmly” with him, to which she said, “I don’t want to talk calmly, I want him to take that [MAGA hat] off.”
The National Review also reported an incident that showed one student’s inability to even see someone else watching a conservative video.
According to the National Review, a Michigan State University student filed a “bias complaint” against his roommate after he saw him watching a video of conservative speaker Ben Shapiro.
According to the outlet, the complaint read, “Ben Shapiro is known for his inflammatory speech that criticizes and attacks the African American community. I thought hate had no place on MSU’s campus yet MSU has roomed me with someone who supports hate speach [sic].”
This complaint was filed through the school’s “Public Incident” website which has received a total of 35 complaints. Other complaints, according to the National Review, include a student finding a completed game of hangman with the word “SOUTH” underneath it and a cartoon posted in a residence hall that made fun of liberals.
Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Ethan Miller
