“I didn’t want them to feel alone,” she said.

The November day she was filmed in the YouTube video, the atmosphere on campus was tense. Racial incidents had unfolded throughout the semester, she said, and the black student group was protesting from a tent encampment in the center of campus. The night before, a truck with a Confederate flag had driven around near the campsite, which the students interpreted as an intimidation tactic.

The morning the video was shot, the university’s president, Timothy Wolfe, had stepped down. The protesting students had spent hours talking to the news media, Ms. Click said, but asked for a break so they could prepare for a news conference. At that point, a human wall formed around the campsite to keep reporters out.

When Ms. Click spotted Mr. Schierbecker, she said, she was suspicious of him and didn’t believe he was with the media. The students’ protocol for perceived threats was to involve some of the bigger protesters to defuse the situation, she said, hence her call for “muscle.”

“I wasn’t prepared for that interaction,” she said, adding that she wished she had taken the time to “respectfully converse” with the student.

“I certainly didn’t mean what I said to be a call for violence,” she said.

Mr. Schierbecker, in a telephone interview, said he had watched and read most of Ms. Click’s recent interviews, but was not sold on her explanation.

“I think she still has a lot to own up to,” he said. “I don’t believe her when she says I caught her in an odd moment.”

Ms. Click’s efforts to recast her narrative have been further complicated by the release last week of a video from the October homecoming parade that shows her cursing at a police officer trying to move protesters off a road. She defended that reaction as most likely being “fairly common for people pushed by police unexpectedly in the middle of an angry crowd.”