The College's decision not to institute a speech code is the result of a misguided liberalism that endangers the welfare of the college community.
While free speech has its virtues, those virtues must be weighed against the numerous disadvantages that the doctrine engenders. A friendlier, reasonably limited speech code would better serve the college community. We must remember that free speech is an intended vehicle for thoughtful argument, not for inflammatory lies.
Supporters of free speech claim that every voice must be heard, and the truth will speak for itself. But such an approach is foolish, and only creates a welcoming atmosphere for harassing opinions and hare-brained insults. Former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography that he "knows it when he sees it." The same holds true for hate speech. Some speech is obviously useless and we can all recognize it.
To stop hate speech I propose that we establish a committee to exactly pinpoint the kind of speech the entire community instantly recognizes as useless and inflammatory. Let's name it Humans Against Hate (HAH). Of course, HAH must only administer students' wishes, not impose their own ideals on the community. To this end, they could distribute a well thought out questionnaire asking students whether certain topics are instantly recognizable as hateful and useless. A reasonable percentage of responses, I would say 90 percent, indicating that a topic is useless and hateful should be enough for the committee to designate that topic as off-limits. Clearly, something that the overwhelming majority considers offensive has no useful purpose. We know it when we hear it.
Enforcement would be easy and practical. Simply make the reporting of hate speech part of the honor code.
Already, much harm has been done by a College speech code that is too free and out of control. The person who wrote the word "Chinks" on the door of two Asian-American men could have been more severely punished I have enough faith in the Dartmouth community to know that well over 90 percent of people would agree that the word the perpetrators scrawled is hateful and thus constitutes a crime more severe than simple graffiti.
I'm confident as well, that HAH would not have tolerated the inflammatory and hateful posters that appeared all over campus at the end of last term accusing fraternities of assault and rape. The charges, clearly leveled by crazed ultra liberals, were made facelessly, without giving fraternities even a chance to defend themselves from such harsh attacks the posters constitute nothing more than reckless, inflammatory speech.
HAH could have spared the community from much injury as recently as last week. Take for example Kenji Hosokawa's recent column abrogating women's role in philosophy. The harm and pain his sexist column caused the readers of The Dartmouth could have been prevented had HAH been in place a month ago. The fact that every letter and editorial written about Hosokawa's column has been firmly against his views, makes it plain to me that a 90 percent majority of our community could have prevented his trash from staining our school paper.
If we act now, we can save ourselves much trouble, consider the advantages HAH would bring to the College by focusing attention only on wholesome argument and eliminating hateful speech: 1) No senseless, baseless verbal attacks on women, 2) No ignorant criticism of minority organizations and their role, 3)No more name-calling of fraternities without evidence, 4)No racist drivel advocating the end of affirmative action
Until HAH is implemented, I suggest the following actions be taken immediately to eliminate hate from our community:
Suspend columnists Kenji Hosokawa '98 and John Strayer '96 from writing in the D.
Rip down all flyers and advertisements in dormitory halls that contain any expletives or ideas clearly harmful to the educational process
Remove books from Baker library that contain communist, fascist or Nazi propaganda.
Expel Dartmouth students that do not support the idea of forming the HAH committee -- undoubtedly they are advocates of hate.
Slowly but surely, we can make our way towards having a community without hate, without discussion, without thought. Wouldn't that be great?
