The Naughty Professor

Dibs! does not want to harp endlessly on malfunctioning academics, but given the things they keep doing, who could resist? Now we’ve got Kathleen Ensz, formerly a professor of French at the University of Northern Colorado — and, as such, the author of Cahier d’Exercices Pour Accompagner: Entree en Scene - Cours Premier de Langue et de Culture — who admits that she put dog feces in a local politician’s office. But, now up on charges, she claims she should be found not guilty because she was simply expressing herself. “Invoking Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Hankey from the television series ‘South Park,’ the lawyer for an ex-professor accused of leaving dog feces at a congresswoman’s office said her client’s actions qualify as protected speech under the First Amendment,” according to the Colorado newspaper Longmont FYI. Ensz, a Democrat, disliked receiving frequent mailers from Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave. Collecting feces in her backyard, Ensz wrapped them in a Musgrave mailer and deposited the parcel in the congresswoman’s office. “Patricia Bangert, one of Ensz’s attorneys ... likened the conduct to a form of political protest such as Jefferson’s criticism of the king of England,” the newspaper reports. “Bangert held up a likeness of Mr. Hankey, an animated, talking piece of human excrement from ‘South Park,’ as evidence of how commonplace the use of feces is for expressing disdain. ‘Etiquette and propriety aside, it is commonplace in today’s society to equate a distasteful or disliked person, situation or thing to feces,’ Bangert said.” Ensz’s trial begins in Greeley on May 15.