Professor Who Harassed Pro-Life Students Surrenders to Police after Threatening Reporter with Machete

SUNY Hunter College professor Shellyne Rodriguez surrendered to police Thursday morning after brandishing a machete at a New York Post reporter who came to her door seeking comment regarding a video in which she can be seen harassing pro-life students.

Rodriguez, 45, turned herself into the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx after footage emerged on Tuesday showing her holding a machete to the throat of Post reporter Reuven Fenton. She has been charged with menacing and harassment, an NYPD spokesman told National Review.

Fenton had visited Rodriguez’s apartment in the Bronx to ask her about a recent controversy on campus in which she destroyed a table display set up by pro-life students. However, upon opening the door, Rodriguez brandished a machete and chased Fenton out of the building.

“Get the f**k away from my door, or I’m gonna chop you up with this machete! Get the f**k away from my door! Get the f**k away from my door!” Rodriguez screams before chasing Fenton outside in broad daylight.

“Get the f**k off the block! Get the f**k out of here, yo!” Rodriguez is heard screaming at Fenton and a Post videographer while still wielding the weapon.

Later that same day, Rodriguez was removed from her post at Hunter College.

“Hunter College strongly condemns the unacceptable actions of Shellyne Rodriguez, and has taken immediate action. Rodriguez has been relieved of her duties at Hunter College effective immediately, and will not be returning to teach at the school,” Vince DiMiceli, the college’s associate vice president of communications, told National Review.

National Review has contacted the NYPD for more information on what Rodriguez is being charged with.

In early May, Rodriguez confronted a group of university students on campus who had set up a table with pro-life pamphlets, berating them for “triggering my students.”

“You’re not educating s**t. This is f***king propaganda,” Rodriguez told one member of the Students for Life group during a tabling session in early May. “What are you going to do like anti-trans next?”

“I mean no, we’re talking about abortion,” one student responds before the art professor interrupts: “This is bull****!”

“This is violent. You’re triggering my students.”

After the student apologizes for the alleged offense, Rodriguez responded, “No, you’re not! Because you can’t even have a f***ing baby. So you don’t even know what that is…Get this sh*t out of here, f*** this s***,” before throwing the group’s pamphlets off table.

Hunter’s resident pro-choice student group, CUNY for Abortion Rights, rushed to her defense following the incident.

“Hunter College adjunct educator Shellyne Rodriguez approached the display, constructively critiqued the group members, and eventually physically took down items from the table,” an official statement co-signed by the Palestine Solidarity Alliance reads.

“Her actions to shut down the tabling were fully justified, and are part of a long and celebrated CUNY legacy of confronting groups such as military recruiters who disseminate misleading information,” the groups added.

“Anti-abortion groups are in collusion with anti-queer and trans, anti-labor, anti-Palestinian campaigns, in a larger violate people’s bodily autonomy, economic well-being, and collective determination.”

A recording of the incident went viral and ultimately led school administrators in mid May to acknowledge they were “taking the matter very seriously,” and that the provost had “opened an investigation into the professor’s actions.”