Take back our campus

For those of you who come here from outside of St. Larwence University. Take Back Our Campus is a blog run by ill-behaved young people, who say rude things about their teachers and peers, take credit for policy changes that were long in the works before they came along, and seem to think it is cute when they correct other people's grammar, rather than just annoying.

They also have some important issues to protest, such as the end to SLU support of Upward Bound, a program for local underpriviledge highschool students. They have defended campus programs on global studies from right wing attacksers who claim that the whole discipline has a liberal bias.



The university has responded by blocking access to the TBOC website from the campus network, and launched a lawsuit to reveal the identify of the students. The university's moral case rests ultimately on their duty to provide a comfortable learning environment for all students, including conservative ones. This is a duty I take seriously. The faculty and administration can take verbal abuse. (Honestly, if you can't mock a grown man for liking Rush a chilling effect has descended over free speech.) However attacking other students is wrong. I have criticized faculty in the past for not treating conservative students fairly, and I will in the future.

Still, I must publically state that blocking the TBOC website and suing the students is an unjust restriction on free speech. This is not a "first amendment" issue--SLU is a private institution. It is not even really a legal issue. It is a moral issue, based in the duty of the university to promote free inquiry.

The idea that drove me to this conclusion is the fact that the TBOC blog isn't a part of SLU. SLU has a duty to create a decent learning environment, but it cannot police every comment made by for and about community members. SLU has boundaries. Once you realize that SLU is blocking an outside website, the rest of the argument comes easily. How could you block every website that uses impolite language? Poor manners are the bread and butter of the internet.

It is also important that TBOC is overtly political speech. Unlike the fraternaties that engaged in racial hazing at my former place of employment, they do not claim to be "just kidding around." Political speech is the most protected class of speech. Understandig the life of the human polity is one of the goals of the unviversity. This is not like cross burning, or some other thing that stradles the boundary between speech and action. This is simply speech.

A lot of the objections that have been raised against TBOC are simply specious. People have complained that they are anonymous, but anonmynity has been apart of American free speech since the Federalist Papers. If you can prove that this is not protected speech, then we can worry about the anomynity of it. Simply pointing to anonmynity is no argument.

People have complained that TBOC deletes comments that are hostile to them. But this simply misunderstands the way blogs work. The blog is the bloggers soapbox. If you want to reply, get your own.

Like anyone who stands up for open speech, I wish the people I defend behaved better. I don't follow undergraduate life closely enough to know about all the people they attack: the dean of students, the guy in charge of first year student residences. I can tell that they don't view their targets as people, but as imperial storm troopers whose only job is to oppress.

The most offensive thing I've seen so far is the fake homosexual dating profile of a staff member, complete with photoshopped beefcake pictures. I'm not sure how much credit you can get for defaming a residential learning coordinator. It is not like you are taking down the president of the world bank or anything. [Note added: it's fake, right? The light on the face looks different than the light on the body. This is important: genuine outing is not fully protected speech] For a correction see here

I'm also troubled by the post which looks like some sort of hit list of conservative students. When I was an undergraduate we put together shit lists. It was easy, because we were at a small school, and could go through the directory over a single case of beer. We didn't publish them.

I still have not seen anything, though, that merits this level of censorship. I invite you, the internet, to show me where I am wrong. There is still much I don't know here. I shouldn't really be doing this. When you have a 2 year old, every moment you spend away needs to be justified, if only because you are dumping the work of parenting on your spouse.

I am deeply grateful for the opportunities SLU has given me. This is easily the best place I have ever worked. I do not criticize administration policies without due consideration. I certainly do not want to alienate the people I work with. I know that resonable people of good faith can come down on any side of this issue.

Update: TBOC has sent me a correction and a clarification, which I have blogged on here.