An Orange Coast College student has been suspended after his secretly obtained recording of a professor’s in-class rant about President Trump went viral.

The college said 19-year-old Caleb O’Neil violated a Coast Community College District policy that prohibits the recording of someone on district property without that person’s knowledge or consent, as well as a policy that prohibits the unauthorized use of an electronic device, according to a letter published by Campus Reform.

“It is my hope that this experience will lead you to truly think through your actions and the consequences of those actions when making decisions in the future,” Victoria Lugo, interim dean of students, wrote in a Feb. 9 letter to Mr. O’Neil.

Mr. O’Neil is suspended during one primary semester and the summer semester, and he has been ordered to write a letter of apology to the professor he recorded, according to the letter. He must also write a three-page essay explaining why he videotaped the professor, why he decided to share the videos, and what kind of damaging impact the videos going viral had on the OCC community.

The letter did not specify whether the suspension begins this semester.

William Becker, an attorney representing Mr. O’Neil, told the Orange County Register that his client plans to appeal and can continue to attend classes during the appeals process.

“This is an attack by leftists in academia to protect the expressive rights of their radical instructors at the expense of the expressive rights of conservative students on campus,” said Mr. Becker, president of the conservative advocacy nonprofit Freedom X.

Mr. O’Neil’s videos of psychology professor Olga Perez Stable Cox delivering a post-election monologue about Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence went viral in December. The school’s College Republicans said they initially alerted campus officials about the incident, but made the videos public after growing frustrated with the administration’s refusal to punish Ms. Cox.

“Our nation is divided. We have been assaulted. It’s an act of terrorism,” Ms. Cox told students of Mr. Trump’s election. “One of the most frightening things for me, and most people in my life, is that the people committing the assault are among us.”

She also referred to Mr. Trump as a “white supremacist” and to Mr. Pence as “one of the most anti-gay humans in this country.”

Ms. Cox later told the Orange County Register that the videos led to a wave of backlash, forcing her to temporarily leave her home due to safety concerns.

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