On the afternoon of Thursday, April 6, the Travis County Sheriff’s Department went to the home of Professor Richard Morrisett as part of a welfare check requested by the University of Texas after Morrisett did not appear for a scheduled appointment. Cops entered his home and found Morrisett deceased, and though they are still awaiting an official cause of death from the Medical Examiner’s Office, any suspicious activity or foul play has been ruled out. This being the case, we cannot speculate as to the cause of Morrisett’s death or details surrounding it. Whether he experienced a stress-induced heart attack brought on by the months of pressure from students, carried out a guilt-driven suicide pushed forward by the public exposure of his violent, anti-women crimes, or simply had a karmic accident, it does not make a difference in our ability to draw out many lessons learned over the course of the past months.

First, it must be said that we do not shed any tears for dead abusers. In contrast to the statement given by UT President Greg Fenves, the death of Morrisett is not a tragedy by any means. The world is better off, if only marginally, for having one less abusive, dangerous man breathing in it. His death means there is one less person who presents an active threat to the women surrounding him. The real tragedy to be considered is the thousands of women and victims who are strangled, beaten, raped, and killed by men like Morrisett. The real tragedy is the thousands of women and victims who are forced to the point of suicide because of the psychological torture they are made to suffer through in the wake of this violence and abuse.

It is not only tragic, but despicable and infuriating that representatives like Fenves in the UT administration who claim to work in the interest of accountability and the safety of women and students will not only refuse to carry out just measures against abusers like Morrisett, but mourn their death as a tragedy! It is revolting that Fenves, the same person who called the results of the report on sexual assault at UT a “wake-up call” and said that “every individual who serves our university must feel valued, respected, and free to learn and work in a safe environment” is the very person harboring and mourning the violent men who make that environment actively dangerous. When we read his crocodile tears, hypocritically claiming, “The first injustice committed in every assault or inappropriate behavior is the act itself, but the second injustice is often the silence of the community surrounding that victim,” it’s hard to find the reaction of Fenves and the UT administration anything in this case anything but ironic! If silence in the face of assault is injustice, then pray tell, Fenves, what are we to label your administration not only remaining silent, but being actively complicit? Nothing less than criminal! Criminals deserve justice. Just as the justice was beginning to tighten its grip around Morrisett’s throat, so too will the masses of oppressed and abused victims of patriarchal violence soon cast their judgment upon the University, shattering its walls and bringing those like Fenves and his fellow bureaucrats in front of the people to stand trial.

At the same time, death is not justice. We do not follow the radical feminist line that claims every abuser should die; we follow a proletarian feminist line that works for the destruction of the economic, political, and cultural basis for the reproduction of patriarchal violence. We do not see men and women as two classes irreconcilably pitted against one another; we see that capitalist patriarchy benefits men overall not as a whole group, but both men and women of the ruling class. That is to say that the vast majority of men in the world, in reality, have more to win from the destruction of patriarchy and the class system that creates and maintains it than they do from upholding it. Our struggle, then, is for the unification of men and women along proletarian feminist lines for the establishment of working class political power, power that can enable us to subject men with deeply-ingrained patriarchal values to total reformation and reeducation. Since we believe that people are first and foremost products of their social conditions, and because social conditions are always bound to change, we understand that it only becomes possible to transform patriarchal men into men who fight for the proletarian feminist cause in the context of a revolutionary proletarian feminist movement.Bringing men to justice and towards eventual transformation in this way is not a painless or simple process – it is a long and hard fight against the deeply-rooted ideas of the ruling class that are within them. The tools we use in this fight, especially when we are fighting a capitalist class who is still in power and do not have revolutionary power established at any significant level, cannot be ones of merely criticism, reeducation, and reformation. Our tools in these conditions (as well as those in stages of revolutionary power) also consist of things like public exposure, embarrassment, and harassment, as well as confrontation and physical violence. Bringing men face to face with the gravity of their crimes is crucial in bringing them to understand the necessity for their personal transformation, and these are all tools which should be made use of. Though he may have chosen to go to the grave before repenting for his crimes, the transformation of someone like Morrisett from someone who committed anti-women crimes into someone who will wholly fight for the feminist cause is, for us, what constitutes the true meaning of justice. This justice cannot be carried out without a fighting feminist movement that is willing to confront men like Morrisett and force them to come to an understanding of their behaviors.

What we have seen over the past years, demonstrated clearly by the case of Morrisett, is that the administration of the University of Texas is completely unwilling to take responsibility for protecting students from not only other abusive students, but the abusive professors who hold a position over these students as well. We knew from the beginning that it was a fool’s errand to ask UT to fire the very man that they harbored and defended for half a year. With the death of Morrisett, it would seem that the administration has now been absolved of taking any responsibility in doing what was the right thing from the beginning regardless. Morrisett was found dead the very same day that the institutional policy changes made as a result of the investigation into the University policies that had allowed him to remain employed at UT were released. In looking at the actual substance of the policy changes contained within the report, which was the one small measure Fenves was determined to make in January in response to Morrisett’s case, it is clear that these changes mean little to nothing in reality. In any case, they would certainly not be applied retroactively to hold Morrisett accountable and subject him to any disciplinary measures, much less firing. The only notable difference made within the changed policy broadens UT’s ability to discipline employees if their off-campus behavior does not reflect the “Mission, Core Values, and Code of Conduct” of the University.

Despite the clear truth that UT does not operate on the basis of values beyond profits, it is laughable that in the 137 years of its existence, it has never once before now been forced to bring its employee’s conduct outside of campus under the scrutiny of its overall institutional “values”. As long as an employee’s actions outside of campus don’t impact the employee’s ability to fulfill their job requirements or affect the immediate safety of students, then all is well! But since strangling, stalking, and assaulting a woman like Morrisett did clearly doesn’t entail being a threat to the safety of students, we know that only the first criteria truly matters to UT. Above all other values lies the ability to work, and thus make profit for the university, especially when it comes to researchers who earn UT substantial grant money like Morrisett. The application of the standard that students should also unwaveringly uphold the University’s values has already been well-established, with several student athletes expelled and barred from campus for sexual assault and physical assault charges against women. In analyzing the 2017-2018 revenue sources for UT, it’s vital to note that 47% of the school’s funding comes from research grants, while only 21% of its funding comes from students’ tuition payments. So why do abuser professor get protections that students don’t? Because he brings in buckets of money for the University! The fact that UT is an institution not for some abstract “public good”, but to secure profits for the capitalist class becomes only more apparent as time goes on. It’s only in times of PR crises like this that UT is forced to enact small formal measures to maintain this facade.

We don’t see a “small victory” in these policy changes, we see this act for what it is: an illusion and nothing more! What does an increasingly broad set of disciplinary measures even amount to when the existing measures weren’t ever enforced? Morrisett went months without reporting his arrest and conviction in this case, breaking the existing policies of UT at the time and he was let off without any sanctions whatsoever. The empty policies and values of UT mean nothing to the students because they clearly mean nothing to the University, who is fully accountable for harboring and protecting Morrisett (with dedicated security after his building was targeted). And true to their vile nature, they continue to staff others like rapist Robert Reece and will likely pull out the same measures to defend him when the students decide to strike out.

In bourgeois societies like the one that is forced upon us, accountability is allowed to be decided upon and kept within the confines of the ruling class’ own institutions. The police police themselves, the government investigates itself, and the University does the same, all while conjuring up bullshit reasons for the lack of real justice or accountability. In the growing movement of the working class whose fight is intensifying and growing more massive and militant daily, accountability comes from the masses of people themselves. These two forms of accountability are fundamentally opposed to one another because they represent mutually exclusive interests – the power of the few capitalists in control currently versus the power of the numerous proletarians and allied people. The burgeoning strength of the latter, which the campaign against Morrisett saw in levels unprecedented at UT for years and which must press onward to new heights, spells nothing less than pure terror for the ruling class. True justice and real accountability will only be achieved through a mobilization of the people against the injustices carried out by the ruling classes and their institutions like the universities. We know that in this system, there is no end to the exploitation and oppressive conditions faced by the people. The death of one abuser is followed by the creation of more. Richard Morrisett is replaced by Robert Reece. The only solution to resolving this seemingly-endless pattern is through organizing the masses of oppressed people to carry out a massive society-wide upheaval and militant destruction of the existing order which does not serve, but exploits them. In a word, it requires revolution. Revolution which accomplishes the full mobilization of working women is the only means by which to achieve a society free from abuse, where the social conditions which create patriarchal ideas are no longer able to exist. Getting to this point means being uncompromising and unhesitant in our understanding of the type of tactics and organizing that will actually be able to arm the people for the fight against the capitalist class, who already carries out a war against us daily. We believe this campaign has, if nothing else, proven these methods to be the only means by which we can organize the people into a resolute fighting force capable of tearing down the walls of the University’s ivory tower.

Since the news of Morrisett’s violent criminal convictions was exposed by local news in late January, we have been campaigning for his removal from UT, a goal we aimed to reach not by convincing the same administration who protected him into a sudden change of heart, but by creating conditions on campus and in Morrisett’s personal life that would have made it more favorable for him to leave UT rather than stay. There has been significant media coverage of our campaign against Morrisett as well as multiple anonymous actions taken against him, with liberal journalists ranging from students supporting these efforts to fascist sympathizers who now say the student body is to blame for this abuser’s death. Because of the shock his death brought, we suspect some may speculate whether the militant tactics used against Morrisett were an appropriate response to his abuse and his continued employment at UT. We disagree with this sentiment fully. The actions taken against him and the complicit University demonstrated the will and power the student body that can only develop to a higher level in the coming times. They were a necessary response to the absolute failure of the University to dole out any sort of punishment against Morrisett after the administration discovered he failed to report his assault arrest and convictions. The actions were certainly a necessary response to the investigation findings which said Morrisett did not pose a threat to campus, despite President Fenves previously admitting he does not know the full scope of abuse on campus, and despite the high prevalence of professors across the country abusing their positions of power to manipulate young women. Considering all this, we believe we had an obligation to post Morrisett’s face and information about his crimes around campus to warn students of this potential, unrestrained threat. These posters were promptly removed by UT staff from poles and walls both on and off campus, despite UTPD stating to media that none of the content on the posters was actually illegal. We were not deterred by this and instead organized a rally outside of the School of Pharmacy to protest Morrisett’s continued employment. The University struck back again, sending over a half dozen UTPD cops into the crowd to arrest a woman who was attending and charging her with criminal trespass, despite the fact that she has never received a verbal or written ban from campus with or without a specified timeline for the ban. It was clear the administration and its lackeys were doing all they could to repress the fight against this admitted domestic abuser, at the cost of the well-being and freedom of women, students, and the community surrounding UT.

Before and after our protest, multiple anonymous acts of vandalism against Morrisett and the administration were discovered on campus and widely reported on. The School of Pharmacy building where Morrisett worked was extensively vandalized, targeting Morrisett for continuing to come to campus and UT for allowing him to continue his work. Morrisett’s laboratory door was also vandalized later on. Most recently, on International Working Women’s Day, the Littlefield fountain was found full of red dye with a message in paint that said “This is the blood of survivors that UT ignores.” We believe these actions caused the administration great anxiety, which in turn may have heightened the repression against our own campaign – however, we do not seek to blame these incidents for the minor additional struggles we have faced over the last few months. Instead, we applaud, encourage, and promote such direct attacks on the University. We have no tears for dead abusers and certainly none for the stained walls or broken windows of a University that continues to staff those abusers who remain alive today. We feel vandalism does not constitute a physical threat to the safety of any students, as graffiti is merely the expression of democracy on the walls of an institution that cares nothing for the democracy of the people. The only threats posed are financial ones that have forced UT to open up their checkbook more and frequently, and to dedicate more resources in order to continue harboring an abuser, and most importantly, the threat of a student body which is growing increasingly discontent with the rule of the University bureaucrats and threatens to break its chains.

Ultimately, the goal of our campaign for Morrisett to never return to campus was achieved, whether indirectly through our actions or not. He will never live another day on this Earth to endanger those around him with his rotten ideas and actions. One man is, however, only one man, and we emphasize the need for a continued and concerted effort to be carried out to root out patriarchal individuals and behaviors in this society. Only the organization of the people into a political weapon which can be mobilized to strike decisively at its enemies will be able to free itself from the oppression of class society and the abuses that it entails. We reject the paths of pacifism and weak resistance in the struggle against the war being waged upon women and all victims of abuse. We will take up the militant tactics proven effective and necessary by students during this campaign as a base for all future endeavors. It is only through these means that we can push our movements forward into an even greater level of confrontation with abusers and the University and begin to establish the power of the working class. The campaign against Morrisett that has been unfolding over the past two and a half months are merely a tiny glimmer of the blinding light that the people have the power to shine upon the world, forcing all of the cockroaches like Morrisett and Fenves to scatter and hide. With the growing heat generated from the militant fight against those who stand against the interests of the oppressed, the flame of the people can only burn brighter and hotter. This flame cannot and will not be extinguished – it will spread until it threatens to burn down the whole wretched University!

Mourn only for the victims!

No tears for dead abusers!

Build the militant proletarian women’s movement!