I've been
very passionate about protecting free speech for quite a while. Probably
as far back as late August, I've wanted to take an active part in
reversing some policies that I see as a threat to a full and complete
education. I was kind of on the fence about it though – school was busy,
I was at that time trying to run a club, and generally had other things on my
mind, so taking the time to make something happen stayed with me,
but wasn't really a priority.
That
changed when one of the editors for the school paper that I work for, the
Watchdog, approached me and told me that they had decided not to run a story I
had written about the violent global reaction to the “Innocence of Muslims”
film. I wasn't terribly surprised, given the nature of the
topic, but it still angered me. I wasn't angry at the editor
though. I was angry at the situation in general, because even though this was
probably the most important news story of the whole month of October, the reactions
the editor was worried about had a precedent in recent history that was
compelling enough to keep that story from being heard on campus.
In
2007, for example, the editor-in-chief of another school newspaper, the Daily Illini, was suspended from school and fired
from their job for reprinting four of the twelve Danish cartoons that had been
circulating around the world and causing an enormous political uproar.
This would be, by any account, a very important news story for any student with
even a vague interest in foreign politics and global affairs, but even talking
about it quickly became controversial because people were getting offended.
The
problem with the whole situation is essentially this: as a
culture, we've been programmed to think that we more or less have a
right not to be offended, and that if someone is offended, it’s the fault of
the person who is doing the offending and not the fault of the person claiming
offence. What is offence, really? I don’t really need to explain
why this mindset is bad if you've read Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit
451,” but in case you haven’t it’s because different people are offended by
different things, and the sensitivity level varies as much as the number of
triggers. If you try to avoid anything and everything that might offend
people, you will inevitably end up with nothing – which costs people the very
education they've paid money for. Regardless, you’ll fail
anyhow, because this coddling treatment offends me!
The
problem we’re facing here at BC is the institutionalization of this way of
thinking through what are called “bias incidents.”
What
is a bias incident? As they’re described in the “Don’t Let the Haters Win”
pamphlets, which you can pick up in the President’s office, a bias incident is
“conduct, speech, or behavior motivated by prejudice or bias toward another
person that does not rise to the level of crime.”
For
obvious reasons, punishing the unfair treatment of
students isn't intrinsically a bad idea. It’s actually a very
good idea, but the way bias incidents are defined unfortunately has a
fundamental flaw, which is that they’re subjective. What do I mean by
that? I mean that whether an action is deemed to be punishable as a bias
incident or not is determined by the perception of the victim. The
pamphlet actually lists three factors on what is implied to be a larger list of
possible aspects used in determining whether an action is a bias incident, but
of the remaining two factors given, one is un-provable (evidence of motive),
and the other is plausibly deniable (evidence of connections to known hate
groups). Perhaps it could be argued that connections to hate groups might
provide a good foundation for an indictment of discriminatory conduct. In any
case, if you look at other instances of censorship on the grounds of bias in
other schools, you’ll notice that motives and ties to hate groups almost never
play any kind of role in making that determination. It almost always
comes down just to the subjective experience of offended.
Let
me explain the connection between bias incidents aimed at student action
towards other students, and the censorship of books, videos, speech, etc.
Besides the obvious fact that a book, video, or speech could qualify as a bias
incident, maintaining these kinds of rules further cultivates the mentality of
entitlement to an unperturbed, unchallenged mind. The society we live in
today is in many ways more sensitive than is healthy for the open dialogue
necessary for a functioning democracy to happen. You can see this in the
increased polarization of political parties and religious ideologies.
People have become close-minded because being open-minded means sometimes
having to admit that you’re wrong, and that hurts. We’d rather not do
that.
On
a related side-note, the culture of entitlement also breeds fear.
Sometimes fear of retribution, but more importantly fear of breaking the
increasingly narrow bubble of social norms. By seeing these kinds of
rules, and BC’s dribbling affirmation of inclusiveness plastered in every room
and on every club charter and on every syllabus, students become attuned to the
language of non-confrontation, and become uncomfortable, even scared, of
speaking their mind because it might lead to conflict. I can’t tell you
how many potentially wonderful debates I've almost gotten into with
students, only to have them back off because they “don’t want to start a
fight.” A debate isn't a fight – it’s the pinnacle of
intellectual and academic stimulation! It’s the pinnacle of learning, and
it's being lost.
To
return to the previous point, bias incidents affect the entire student culture,
notably student attitudes towards learning materials, even if the language is
aimed at interpersonal interaction. This brings us to one of the biggest
specters that looms up whenever subjective standards become objective rules:
censorship, and it’s more evil twin, self-censorship.
Do
you know what the most banned book in the United States is? It’s probably
not what you think it is… I would have guessed something like “Mein Kampf” or
“The Turner Diaries,” but it’s actually J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter”
series. The most painful book to see banned, and another of the most
commonly censored, is Mark Twain’s classic “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
Under these subjective rules designed to protect students from having their
feelings hurt, students are being deprived of what is arguably the most
eloquent, beautiful, and powerful counter to racism ever written on the grounds
of itself being racist.
Another
example: just last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled,
“How Free Speech Died on Campus,” which described how Yale
students aren't allowed to wear T-shirts with F. Scott Fitzgerald
quotes on them, and certain passages from the Quran aren't allowed to
be quoted at Tufts. In one particularly Orwellian instance from a mere
two weeks ago, the Fordham University administration condemned a political club
for inviting a controversial speaker, and ambiguously called the invitation a
“test” of the school’s speech codes. After the club caved in and
disinvited the speaker, the administration praised itself for its valiant
defense of free speech.
Taking
a step back from the specifics, you might be asking “How did this whole
phenomenon come about?” The judicial branch is more or less solely
responsible in this case. There are a number of court cases have slowly
constricted freedoms of speech over the last century; certainly not just for
students, but for students more than anyone else. In 2005, the
Supreme Court ruled in Hosty
v. Carter that for University
environments “Hazelwood provides our starting point,” which is a reference to
the 1973 Supreme Court case over free speech in high schools, Hazelwood School District v.
Kuhlmeier. In that 1973 case, the court ruled that the school
administration had the right to limit student speech that was
“school-sponsored,” and gave among its examples of things that could be
censored, material that was “poorly written,” material that “would associate
the school with anything other than neutrality on matters of political
controversy,” and most insultingly, material that was “unsuitable for immature
audiences.” But even these cases are built on a frame of reference that
goes all the way back to 1919, a case that was so influential that you’ll
probably recognize the ruling even if you don’t know the case, since it has a
habit of coming up quite a lot.
Case
in point: at the student open forum for the presidential candidate Dr. David
Rule, (who I’m very happy to say will almost certainly be our new president
this coming winter quarter), I asked him where he saw the line between first
amendment protections and protections for students against bullying, since that
was something of a hot topic at those question and answer sessions. His
response was that in his view, first amendment
protections aren't absolute, and he gave by way of explanation, the
example of how someone can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater because it would
endanger other people’s safety.
What
he was referencing with that comment was that 1919 Supreme Court case, Schenck v. United States, in
which the famous Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that “The most stringent
protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting
fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” By his reasoning, such a use of words
would pose a “clear and present danger” that the government has not only the
constitutional ability, but the duty to limit.
While
the ruling sounds reasonable enough at first glance and standing alone, the
background might portray the court’s decision in a slightly different light.
Charles Schenck, the secretary of the Socialist Party of America at the time,
had been distributing pamphlets to young men of military age urging them to
oppose the draft and the American involvement in the First World War. He
was arrested and convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917, which, among
other things, made “any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language
about the form of government of the United States ... or the flag of the United
States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy,” a criminal act. It was
arguably one of the worst pieces of American legislation ever passed into law,
in terms of undermining the values of free society and diversity of opinion and
expression protected and celebrated by our great Constitution. Schenck
appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that his 1st amendment rights protected his
opposition to the American involvement in the war, which the Supreme Court
under Holmes shot down, labeling his speech as allegorically equivalent to
shouting fire in a crowded theater.
What’s
painfully ironic in hindsight is that there really was a fire… there was an
enormous fire on the Western Front, where the United states eventually lost
over 115,000 soldiers, and nearly doubled that in wounded. In casualties,
it was the greatest loss of life the Western world had experienced in history,
not to be outdone until World War II a few decades later. Schenck was in
this case the real firefighter, and Oliver Wendell Holmes threw him in prison
for attempting to alert people to the danger.
So
who is to decide what speech is harmful and what speech is good? Clearly
the US Supreme Court shouldn't be the one deciding. So maybe we
should allow Community College administrators to make that decision
instead? Deciding for us adults what we ought to be allowed to write and
say? And by extension to read and hear?
Well,
as a paying student and customer of the college, this is my opinion – my
judgment if you will, that I think is equally if not more important than the
Hazelwood ruling: the bias incident code in its current form is “poorly
written.” It “associates me with a position of neutrality on matters of
political controversy,” which is wrong because I actually care about these
controversies and have an opinion about them that I have a right to say.
Most importantly, I think that subjective restrictions are “unsuitable for
mature audiences.” Particularly educated mature audiences, and especially if
they’re paying for the right to read, write, listen, and speak.
As
a mere Community College, it isn't really realistic to hope to
overturn fatuous Supreme Court rulings, but if those higher up insist on taking
full advantage of the censorial power allowed to them by the courts, I would
hope we can redirect them to the 2001 case of Kincaid
v. Gibson, in which it was ruled that the learning environment of the
University is the “quintessential marketplace of ideas, which merits full, or
indeed heightened first amendment protections.” We cannot attain a
complete education without coming out from under the sheltering rock and
exposing ourselves to different ideas and opinions, even if they might offend
the more thin-skinned among us.
If
my editor is afraid to publish my writings for fear of retribution, something
is wrong. If my communications teacher can’t show us historical examples
of propaganda due to rules best described as puerile, something is wrong.
If our free speech is given lip-service where it matters least – in a so-called
free speech zone, (as if one needed a zone in which to maintain their
protection under the 1st amendment)
– but taken away in the only place where it truly matters, the classroom,
something is dreadfully wrong. And yet, all of these things are true, and
we as students are suffering for it, often without even knowing
what we've lost and what we’re continuing to lose.
These
things aren’t the fault of Bellevue College’s administration or faculty, as far
as I can tell. Our vice-president of Diversity is as vocal in her support of
free speech as she is in defending students from discrimination, even going so
far as to defend a racist message on campus (so long as it’s kept within the
“free-speech zone”), and speech code policies have been standard practice
across the landscape of our nation’s educational institutions for a while
now. This, however, doesn't make these policies
acceptable. We should get rid of bias incidents. We should get rid
of them completely, or if nothing else, reword them and all of the other rules
like them with concrete, objective language that offers protection for students
against harassment, assault, and other manifestly and objectively harmful
acts. Removing subjective standards of discrimination won’t somehow
increase the amount of bias and hatred on campus, but it will increase student
and faculty freedoms to more efficiently and effectively pursue what they came
to college to do: get an education.
Remember,
bias incidents don’t make colleges safer; they only sterilize the classroom of
the very diversity of thought and perspective they were designed to
protect. When you really boil it down, all education is is exposure to
new ideas and perspectives, which is precisely what these rules are taking
away. Don’t let the censors win: lets get rid of bias incidents.
