Dove partners with BLM activist accused of wrongly getting white student expelled to promote ‘fat liberation’

[The Bobster]

Dove partners with BLM activist to promote ‘fat liberation’ after she was accused of getting white student wrongly expelled

Beauty giant Dove has partnered with a Black Lives Matter activist to promote “fat liberation,” after she was accused of wrongfully getting a white student expelled over a “misheard” remark.…

nypost.com

Dove partners with BLM activist accused of wrongly getting white student expelled to promote ‘fat liberation’​

By
Melissa Koenig



Published Sep. 14, 2023, 8:24 a.m. ET







Beauty giant Dove has partnered with a Black Lives Matter activist to promote “fat liberation,” after she was accused of wrongfully getting a white student expelled from her university over a “misheard” remark.


Zyanha Bryant, a community organizer and student activist studying at the University of Virginia, made the announcement she was a “Dove ambassador” on her Instagram page at the end of August, as she spoke about her goal of ending the stigma of being overweight.


“My belief is that we should be centering the voices and the experiences of the most marginalized people and communities at all times,” Bryant, 22, said in a video.


“So when I think about what fat liberation looks like to me, I think about centering the voices of those who live in and who maneuver through spaces and institutions in a fat body.”


She captioned her video by saying, “Fat liberation is something we should all be talking about … Tell us what Fat Liberation means to you using the hashtag #SizeFreedom and tagging @dove to share your story.”

Zyanha Bryant announced on Instagram that she is partnering with Dove to support “fat liberation.”Zyahna Bryant / Instagram
But even though Bryant has been praised for her work with Black Lives Matter and getting the Robert E. Lee statue taken down in Charlottesville, she has also come under fire in recent months for her efforts to get a white student named Morgan Bettinger suspended from campus.


She claimed Bettinger referred to BLM protesters as “good speed bumps” in the summer of 2020 — only to later admit she may have “misheard” her.


The incident began in July 2020, when Bettinger mistakenly drove down a street where BLM protesters had gathered.




She told Reason magazine she saw a dump truck partially blocking the road, but because the street was not completely blocked off, she continued driving.


When she realized the road was actually being blocked off from traffic, Bettinger said, she decided to park her car and see what was going on.


As she passed by, Bettinger said, the truck driver began talking to her, and the two had a brief conversation.

She said everyone should be talking about “fat liberation” — the idea of ending the stigma of being overweight.Zyahna Bryant / Instagram
Bettinger says she remembered telling the truck driver something along the lines of, “It’s a good thing that you are here because otherwise these people would have been speed bumps,” trying to praise his efforts to block traffic.


The driver later corroborated Bettinger’s remark to local cops.


But Bryant overheard part of the conversation and tweeted that she said the protesters “would make ‘good speedbumps’” along with a video showing Bettinger backing down the street in her car while Bryant and several other protesters follow.

Morgan Bettinger was accosted by Black Lives Matter protesters after she turned down a road where they were demonstrating in July 2020.WUVA NEWS
“She then called the police and started crying, saying we were attacking her,” Bryant claimed.


The tweet was quickly shared more than a thousand times, and internet sleuths soon identified the driver as Bettinger.


The fact that she had pro-police social media posts, and her late father had worked as a police officer, only seemed to irritate people more, according to the Daily Mail.

Internet sleuths soon identified the driver as Morgan Bettinger, and Bryant demanded she be expelled from the University of Virginia.morgan.bettinger/Facebook
Just one day later, Bryant began demanding that school administrators expel Bettinger.


“EMAIL these UVA deans now to demand that Morgan face consequences for her actions and that UVA stop graduating racists,” she tweeted.


Bryant herself filed a complaint with the University Judiciary Committee, a student-run disciplinary system, alleging Bettinger had threatened students’ health and safety.

​

It found Bettinger guilty of making a legitimate threat against the protesters, despite being unable to prove Bryant’s claims about her intentions.


The jurors ruled that even saying the words in a harmless manner during a protest merited punishment, according to documents obtained by Reason magazine.


Bryant also filed a complaint with the school’s Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights, in which she claimed Bettinger repeated the statement five times and had discriminated against her due to her race.


The EOCR office found that three of the five accusations could not be corroborated, and a report found Bryant most likely did not hear Bettinger’s comments firsthand after no eyewitnesses were able to corroborate her version of events.


Bettinger eventually graduated from UVA but with a permanent mark on her record, Reason reported, likely hindering her chances of getting into law school as she had dreamed.


“This whole situation has had a huge impact on my life,” she told Reason magazine. “The university has never had to answer for what their actions have done.”


Bettinger is said to be considering bringing a lawsuit against school officials, seeking to get her record cleared.

Bryant has continued to make a name for herself, being profiled in the Washington Post and being named to Ebony’s “Power 100” list last year.zysaidso/Instagram
Her lawyers claim her “conviction and punishment were effectuated without a constitutionally sufficient process” because the school had failed to retry her or provide a “de novo review of the clearly erroneous judgment of the UJC,” according to the school newspaper, the Cavalier Daily.
Meanwhile, Bryant has continued to make a name for herself, being profiled in the Washington Post and being named to Ebony’s “Power 100” list last year.
The Post has reached out to Dove and its parent company, Unilever, for comment.

 

[Arheel's Uncle]

UVA Dean of Students 'Purposefully Tampered' With Investigations Into Student's Speech, Lawsuit Claims

UVA found "insufficient evidence" to conclude that Morgan Bettinger called protesters "good speed bumps." They punished her anyway.

news.yahoo.com

UVA Dean of Students 'Purposefully Tampered' With Investigations Into Student's Speech, Lawsuit Claims​

Emma Camp
August 2, 2023·4 min read


Photo 52270314 © Joe Sohm | Dreamstime.com


In the summer of 2020, Morgan Bettinger was a rising senior at the University of Virginia when a fellow student publicly accused her of telling a group of Black Lives Matter protesters that they would make "good speed bumps."

Though the university's own investigation cleared Bettinger of wrongdoing—even finding that it was "more likely than not" that Bettinger's accuser never heard her make a "speed bumps" remark at all—the school punished her harshly. She was expelled in abeyance and required to complete a litany of other sanctions.
Now, Bettinger has filed a lawsuit against the university claiming that administrators violated her First Amendment rights.

The incident—which was the subject of a Reason investigation published in April—occurred on the evening of July 17, 2020. Bettinger says that she was driving home from work when she saw a dump truck blocking the road ahead. When she got out of her car to investigate, she was approached by the dump truck driver.
Bettinger and the truck driver had a casual conversation, and at one point, she says she told the driver something to the effect of, "It's a good thing that you are here, because otherwise these people would have been speed bumps."

Bettinger says that she meant her comment as a casual, friendly remark. "It was simply a comment made to a [dump] truck driver who was sitting and blocking the road, and just saying, like, 'It's good you're here,'" she told Reason. Bettinger later took a photo of the crowd and walked back to her car.

"The words are entirely innocuous and innocent, and no reasonable, objective person could ever conclude otherwise," the lawsuit notes. "The words do not constitute a 'true threat' as that term is defined by applicable Supreme Court precedent."

However, as Bettinger walked back to her car, she says that a group of protesters began to follow her, growing increasingly aggressive and shouting insults at her. A few minutes later, Zyahna Bryant, a local activist and rising sophomore at the University of Virginia, tweeted allegations that Bettinger drove around police barricades and told protesters that they would make "good speedbumps." A social media firestorm followed, and students began complaining to the university and demanding Bettinger be expelled.

Over the next several months, Bettinger would be subject to a litany of investigations from the university. The first investigation—by the University Judiciary Committee (UJC), a student-run disciplinary apparatus—would find Bettinger guilty of "threatening" students, even while seeming to agree with Bettinger's version of her statements and not Bryant's. The UJC noted, "You yourself acknowledged saying 'it's a good thing you are here because, otherwise, these people would have been speed bumps.' Given the tragic events of August 12 and the context in which you uttered these words, you disregarded Charlottesville's violent history." But a second investigation, this time from the school's civil rights office, ultimately cleared Bettinger of wrongdoing and concluded that there was insufficient evidence that Bettinger ever said that protesters would make "good speed bumps." In light of these results, Bettinger asked to have her sanctions expunged—but the university refused.
Now Bettinger has filed a lawsuit, arguing that her speech was not a threat and was facially protected by the First Amendment—and therefore, the University of Virginia, as a public institution, had no grounds to punish her.

"[University of Virginia] President Jim Ryan knew, unequivocally, that Morgan Bettinger's speech was free and protected under the First Amendment, that Morgan had been wronged, and that he was intentionally committing the University to violate those sacred rights," the lawsuit states.

Further, the suit claims that Allen Groves, the university's then-dean of students, directly intervened to raise the likelihood that the UJC would punish Morgan, despite the facially First Amendment—protected nature of her speech.

"Groves purposefully tampered with at least two of the 'proceedings,'" the lawsuit states. He allegedly "personally initiated a complaint, himself and on his own behalf, against Morgan with the UJC," "teed" Bettinger up for "trial," and even "participated as a witness against Morgan at her so-called 'trial.'"
"The Dean of Students for the University of Virginia did not simply put his proverbial thumb on the scales of justice, he put his entire weight on it," the suit states.

While the lawsuit will likely take years to work its way through the courts, Bettinger has been left with permanent reputational damage due to the university's sanctions against her.
"Morgan's character and reputation have been utterly destroyed by the University's, Defendant Ryan's, and Defendant Groves' misconduct. She has been terminated from her employment and lost jobs that had been offered to her as a result of these events…. Morgan's chances to attend graduate school, such as law school, have been substantially reduced, if not eliminated entirely," the suit states.

"Despite their personal knowledge that multiple University investigators had concluded that Morgan was innocent of the charges against her," it reads, "these Defendants and the Defendant University persecuted, prosecuted, and punished Morgan Bettinger."