"I hate the word welcoming." This was the proclamation of Harvey Silverglate at a speech he gave Tuesday at Dartmouth. He uses this statement to introduce his beliefs about when, why and how free discourse vanished from college campuses. Never have I heard an argument that more poignantly encapsulated my disgust with the Dartmouth administration than Silverglate's speech. His lecture and book "The Shadow University," is the type of conversation about freedom of speech that we are sorely missing on this campus. The mass quantities of civil liberties violations and resulting reverse discrimination are testaments to this.
Silverglate used the word welcoming as a metaphor for the trend that began in the mid-1980s, when administrators popped up in the realm of student life. (Three cheers for the Dartmouth Student Life Initiative a decade later). No longer were administrators academics who worried about petty issues such as learning, but rather they had become an administrative class who held only career ambitions of navigating the new world of college administration and watching their own necks. Everyone became afraid of being called a racist for tolerating things that could be construed as racist.
According to Silverglate, the administrators took their new roles as welcoming coordinators to introduce all types of "vile social engineering" machinations. The brainchild of the new administrative class was the idea of speech codes.
Offensive speech is not harassment. It is blatantly unconstitutional to deem speech inappropriate simply based on the offensive nature it might contain. Inappropriate, outrageous and disgusting as a view may be, the right for a person or group to express its views freely is the basis of our nation. It is supposedly the basis behind an academic community. Dartmouth will never admit that it limits academic discourse, but in point of fact it does.
Silverglate points out that President Wright states that Dartmouth will take action against racist, sexist and homophobic speech, but then goes on to state in the same sentence on the Dartmouth website that there are no speech codes here. Attacks against "fundamental values that we hold dear" will not be tolerated.
Who are "we?" It might be 99 percent of the community, but it is our duty to uphold the rights of that one percent. What ever happened to Patrick Henry's "I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it?"
The Supreme Court has held time after time that there are very few exceptions to the rule of free speech. Silverglate in his lecture enumerated the times where free speech was upheld even in the most horrid circumstances. Cases involving the Ku Klux Klan and Larry Flynt were just two examples. He also cited how speech codes carefully constructed by constitutional lawyers at the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin and Stanford University law schools were struck down.
Dartmouth is a private institution. It is not bound by the Constitution in this respect. This is the stark reality. I call for Dartmouth to repeal its speech codes or admit that it does not value academic freedom and drop the intellectual pompousness it carries proudly.
The Dartmouth speech code gives license for administrators to interpret forms of speech that they deem offensive as an action of harassment. One of the most egregious forms of this occurs in student publications. Though I disagree with the politics of some of these groups, the publication of their views enriches dialogue. Our community benefits by having contrasting viewpoints. This is the basis behind many liberal ideals.
It seems that at Dartmouth this only applies to viewpoints that the administration feels comfortable with. The college is taking every action in its power to prevent certain publications from operating at Dartmouth. It has threatened some that they are not to deliver inside of dorms, and recently one student publication was kicked out of the student organizations fair. As a student not associated with any publication, I see this as unnecessary aggression and something that all publications on campus should take issue with. Why can't I read it and make my own decisions about their opinions? Why do I need a puppet master to protect my mind from the evils of politically incorrect statements?
The ease with which people will brand someone racist or offensive without taking the time to have a rational conversation about the merits of one's argument is the essence of the problem with college speech codes.
I am not a racist for supporting the rights of people who might be. I don't try to offend people with my opinions, but if I do, too bad. This is the way "offensive" speech should be thought of. I happen to support most of the liberal agenda, but it doesn't give me the right to be a moral police officer on someone else's opinion. Perhaps the people who preach tolerance the most might want to consider looking in the mirror the next time they yell at Ashcroft and Rumsfeld about the government's invasion of civil liberties. I consider myself a progressive but I can tolerate conservative viewpoints. I'm having trouble tolerating the minions of Parkhurst Hall.
