Seneca requests the the facts be set straight

Two professors at Clemson University complained to the Seneca mayor and the city council about the city’s handling of the Zachary Hammond case.  The city says those professors had the right to express themselves.  The professors appeared before the mayor and the council during a meeting late last year.   But, in a news release Friday, the city sought to set the facts straight.  “The City strongly believed and believes professors, who work at a public university and receive publicly funded salaries, should not invoke the public institution’s name to accredit, bolster, or advance their own personal and political views.”  In the news release, Seneca takes the position that the professors “invoked their academic professorships while making no intellectual effort whatsoever to understand both sides of the dispute.”  Seneca recently announced a $2.1 million dollar settlement of a federal lawsuit filed by the Hammond estate against the city, Police Chief John Covington and police officer Mark Tiller as the result of the shooting of Hammond last summer.