News/Commentary

BLM activist thrives after reportedly ruining white student’s life over a ‘misheard’ remark

April 30, 2023 | | Print Article

A well-known Black Lives Matter activist reportedly ruined a University of Virginia student’s life over what now appears to be a false accusation, surprise, surprise.

The drama traces back to the summer of 2020, when Morgan Bettinger, a white senior at UVA, was driving home from work when she stumbled on a Black Lives Matter protest.

Next to the protesters was a dump truck whose owner had reportedly parked the vehicle there to protect the protesters.

During a conversation with the dump truck driver, Bettinger said, “It’s a good thing that you are here, because otherwise, these people would have been speed bumps.”

“While she says she doesn’t remember her exact words, she maintains that her comment was intended to thank the driver for protecting the protesters, many of whom were sitting in the middle of often-busy East High Street,” according to Reason magazine, which broke the story.

But evidently, one of the BLM protesters, UVA student Zyahna Bryant, misheard Bettinger say the protesters would make “good f–king speed bumps,” and then told everybody else.

“The woman in this truck approached protesters in #Charlottesville, and told us that we would make ‘good speedbumps.’ She then called the police and started crying saying we were attacking her,” Bryant wrote on Twitter.

“Bryant also posted a series of videos—not of the alleged ‘speed bump’ comment itself, but of its aftermath. In the videos, an SUV reverses down a street while Bryant and several other protesters follow. ‘It’s a Karen, it’s a Karen,’ Bryant taunts,” according to Reason.

All hell then broke loose, with other students and local “journalists” — of course — all jumping on the bandwagon and calling for punishment, with Bryant leading the charge.

It didn’t help when Bettinger called the police on the protesters. She was predictably soon after doxxed.

“Once Bettinger’s identity was established, UVA students seemed particularly inflamed. The alleged perpetrator was one of their own. One student tweeted that Bettinger was a ‘f*cking Nazi.’ Another wrote: ‘All I know is that I’m not comfortable being classmates with someone who promotes domestic terrorism,'” Reason notes.

Following Bettinger being doxxed, Bryant began a campaign “to send mass complaints to school administrators demanding [her] expulsion.”

“EMAIL these UVA deans now to demand that Morgan face consequences for her actions and that UVA stop graduating racists,” she tweeted. She also filed a complaint with UVA’s student-like University Judiciary Committee (UJC).

The UJC for its part predictably found her guilty and sentenced her to expulsion in abeyance, meaning she was allowed to stay at the school, but with a huge mark on her record, and the threat of expulsion hanging over her head if she did something else.

She was also sanctioned multiple times.

All this is the bad news. The good news is that several investigations were conducted, and none of them found proof of Bettinger having ever said that the protesters would make “good f–king speed bumps.”

“A student-run investigation agreed with Bettinger’s, not Bryant’s, version of what transpired. A separate investigation by the school’s civil rights office concluded that none of Bryant’s allegations had sufficient evidence to support them,” Reason magazine notes.

“Bryant’s most damning claim—that Bettinger had told protesters they would make ‘good f–king speed bumps’—had no corroborating witnesses, even though it allegedly occurred in front of a crowd of more than 30 people,” according to Reason.

But there’s more. Bryant later changed her story and said she wasn’t sure any longer whether she’d heard Bettinger say what she’d thought she said.

Bettinger was relieved, though frustrated.

“Yes, I was vindicated. But just because they found the correct answer, in some sense, didn’t get rid of everything I had just gone through,” she said, referencing smears, death threats, and the aftermath of what happened in 2020.

“Bryant has thrived since the incident. She received a glowing Washington Post profile in 2021, and last year she was named to Ebony’s ‘Power 100’ list and was featured in a Juneteenth-themed post on Instagram’s official page,” Reason notes.

Bettinger meanwhile has to live with a giant mark on her record and the continued fear of being targeted by still-angry BLM zealots like Bryant. But she is now fighting back. According to Reason, she’s preparing to file a lawsuit against UVA for having violated her First Amendment rights and committed due process violations.

“Although Bryant initiated the process of retaliation through her social media postings and formal complaints … the active and ongoing actions of the Defendants chilled her speech, adversely impacted her personal safety and emotional/mental health, upheld her punishment and caused the long-term harm to her reputation,” the suit reads.

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Vivek Saxena
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