lurches hateward. William Creeley at FIRE:
Yesterday, in his blog entry discussing the difficult road facing petition candidates for governing board positions at Harvard University and Dartmouth College—and the substantial hostility they face if elected—Kyle provided an excellent overview of the independent campaign, tenure, and eventual dismissal of former Dartmouth Trustee Todd Zywicki. As Kyle usefully recounts, Zywicki, a professor of law at George Mason University School of Law, was elected to Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees in 2005 as a petition candidate after running on a free speech platform. Once elected, Zywicki and his fellow elected petition candidates followed through on their campaign promises by leading a successful effort to eliminate Dartmouth’s speech codes and thereby uphold Dartmouth’s stated commitment to free speech, eventually earning Dartmouth a “green light” ranking from FIRE. Earlier this month, Dartmouth’s newly-stacked Board voted not to reelect Zywicki to a second term.
Following his dismissal, Zywicki posted an open letter to the Dartmouth community, in which he argued that he “was denied reelection either because of the content of my speech or for some unnamed reason for which [he] received no notice or opportunity to respond.” In response, John Engelman, an executive board member of Dartmouth’s Association of Alumni, protested in a letter to the editors of The Dartmouth that Zywicki’s open letter contained “distortions, misstatements of facts and outrageous accusations.” Venturing further still, Engelman writes:
Zywicki resurrects the canard that a speech code existed at Dartmouth prior to the election of T.J. Rodgers ‘70 to the Board . This is not true. I challenge anyone to produce a copy of that “speech code.” If it existed, it had to be somewhere in print – in the student handbook, the rules and regulations of the College – somewhere. But no one has been able to find it. Please point it out to us, or drop this unfounded accusation.
We at FIRE are only too happy to accept Engelman’s “challenge.”
First, as a matter of definitional clarity, FIRE considers any campus regulation that punishes, forbids, heavily regulates, or restricts a substantial amount of protected speech, or what would be protected speech in society at large, to be a speech code. This definition is necessary because colleges rarely label restrictions on speech as “speech codes” in handbooks and institutional policies.
Until at least January 2005—FIRE announced Dartmouth’s abandonment of its speech codes in May 2005—Dartmouth’s residence hall harassment policy stated:
The residential community is not a place for behavior that is demeaning or humiliating, creates a hostile living environment, produces or could be expected to produce mental or physical harm, or that demonstrates intolerance or disregard for another person’s dignity or well-being. Such behavior will be addressed in a prompt and serious manner by Residential Life staff.
There can be no question that this policy restricted speech, on threat of “prompt and serious” punishment, that would be protected outside of Dartmouth’s campus. The policy has a number of infirmities. First, the vast majority of speech that may be objectively considered “demeaning” and “humiliating” is protected by the First Amendment—and that’s if we’re talking about speech that a reasonable person would find to be “demeaning” and “humiliating.” Unfortunately, this policy has no such objectivity requirement, leaving student speech only as protected as the most unreasonable student’s sensitivities may allow. Making matters yet worse, the policy incorporates vague, subjective terms like “mental harm,” “intolerance,” and “disregard,” leaving students to guess at what behavior is and is not subject to punishment. As a result, students have an incentive to self-censor, lest they cross an imperceptible line, resulting in a chilling effect on student speech.
Similarly, open letters sent in May of 2001 to the Dartmouth community from President James Wright and former Dean of the College James Larimore made clear to students the narrowly restricted contours of acceptable speech at Dartmouth and thus served as de facto speech codes. Wright and Larimore issued their letters to explain the punishment of Zeta Psi, a Dartmouth fraternity banned from campus after publishing a private newsletter that insulted specific Dartmouth students. (The newsletter was retrieved from Zeta Psi’s fraternity house and out of a trashcan by a non-fraternity member, then made publicly available.) Since Zeta Psi was banned from campus without seeming to have broken a single published rule or regulation, the letters from Wright and Larimore illustrated the unwritten rules that nevertheless governed conduct and justified punishment at Dartmouth. As such, the restrictions on student speech outlined in these letters were, in effect, statements of policy.
Zeta Psi is my fraternity. My college has demeaned and humiliated me, again.
Mr. Engelman, I’d like to suggest that you have an open debate with Professor Zywicki on the issues, before the students of the College, so that they can weigh the evidence and make up their minds.
Is there any way to get your (our) hands on the ΖΨ satire that brought about their banishment?
FIRE is the only organization left I’ll contribute to.
Somewhat related:
If there are any Harvard alums reading this thread, you may not know that Harvey Silverglate, the chairman and founder of FIRE, is running for trustee — the reason being that Harvard is doing everything in its power to prevent you from finding out about it.
I think there’s another outsider trustee running as well. I don’t know anything about the other guy, but Silverglate definitely deserves your vote.
Good question, Sdferr. I’ll see what I can do.
NYT article contemporary to the banishment, for whatever it may be worth.
FIRE’s pimp hand is strong.
And fuck Dartmouth.
I think its great that FIRE exists, but isn’t their work something that consumer choice could handle?
I think you are a mendacious crapweasel who isn’t nearly as clever as you think you are.
My college had a you have to live on campus for two years so we can indoctrinate you more better policy. I learned that when police beat you up it’s wrong but it’s wronger iffin you’re a black man.
Hey, I’m just a fascist that likes lawsuits and other pressure to be put on private institutions that don’t treat their consumers the way I think they should be treated. So you can see whats so hot about FIRE.
If you just made a LOLwut? macro it would save everybody a lot of time, meya.
Hey, I’m just a fascist
You got this part right, liebot.
FIRE is a national treasure and does the lord work.
I think its great that FIRE exists, but isn’t their work something that consumer choice could handle?
First, it’s a travesty that there should be a need for FIRE.
Second, if all universities were equally prestigious, then the consumer-choice principle would have some merit.
Third, the “consumers” are mostly the parents, not the students. Universities don’t advertise their monomaniacal political environment, and undergrads don’t have the moxie or the experience to stand up to their much better educated teachers.
Ergo, the consumer-choice principle works when information is freely available (truth in labeling and advertising) and the one who suffers the consequences of the decision is the same person footing the bill.
I am a Dartmouth alumnus; I voted for Todd Zywicki in 2005 and for other petition candidates, in part because I was informed by a recent graduate of the existence of the speech code that, we’re now told, didn’t exist. I have stopped giving to my alma mater because to do otherwise is to be complicit in the extracurricular freedom suppression that prevails in the college’s administration, and to do less is to be ineffective in bringing about a change and the removal of these silly autocrats from their pathetic positions of power at what is becoming, alas, a second-class school.
Money talks; its absence talks loudly and will not long be ignored. Wallets pocketed then, ladies and gentlemen of Dartmouth.
“Money talks; its absence talks loudly and will not long be ignored. Wallets pocketed then, ladies and gentlemen of Dartmouth.”
See, dicentra, that’s kind of what I mean by the consumer choice idea.
See, dicentra, that’s kind of what I mean by the consumer choice idea.
So in other words, it means whatever you want it to mean.
You obviously don’t understand how breathlessly schools like Dartmouth sell the notion of being connected for life, so in the context of the actual post you don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about.
story=-harvard
i work union construction/ and harvard has a big endowment
so any contracts that harvard has with unions is massive
anyway-harvard cut a deal where if the union wanted work it had to accept a certain pay-scale- 90% if new construction/ less if re-hab work
also they make u park 2 miles away[other side of charles river]
and u take a little shuttle bus to campus-
i’d say it adds another 20 minutes to ur commute
then they have all these green materials [govt subsidized] that don’t work like ur normal shit[ i.e.-re-processed drywall made outta..? ]
so- them’s my harvard stories
how u like them apples matt damon/matt damon
thanks
Like Everyman, I am another Dartmouth Alum who voted for all of the petition candidates; I also voted against the ridiculously rewritten “alumni constitution,” and for the parity slate in last year’s Alumni Council elections. I also voted against the latest alumni amendment–because it seems like more of the same suppression coming down from the Administration.
I had given regularly for many years, but ever since the trustees announced their board-packing power-grab, I have stopped giving. I don’t plan to consider giving again until President Wright has retired (soon, thankfully), nor until Ed Haldeman has left the board of trustees. I was never a large donor (I work in the non-profit sector), but my gifts have always been calculated in the percentage of alumni who donate, and I know that more and more of us are withholding gifts for the same reasons.
It seems to me that consumer choice works best when the consumer is well-informed. It’s hard to see how FIRE fails to provide that service, inasmuch as university are hardly likely to advertise their speech codes.
And it’s always fun to watch lefties step into classical liberal shoes and clod around for a while. Consumer choice? How laissez-faire of you!
I’m just glad that meya is spreading the word about Dartmouth’s speech codes and their trustees’ efforts to cover up the fact that they have enforced speech codes for years. It’s that kind of publicity that motivates the public choice solutions she so admires.
You are spreading the word far and wide, aren’t you, meya?
Meya should spend some time seeing the effect FIRE had at the U. of Delaware residence house racial indoctrinations. The program was never a part of the student handbook nor was it ever presented to incoming students or their parents. FIRE brought the egregious issue to the public and enough pressure was applied to, eventually, shut it down completely.
Even consumers have agencies and organizations that protect their rights, meya, so your snarky aside was ludicrous.
And I agree with Jeff. This organization does great work and not just to protect conservatives.
SBP,
Thanks for the heads-up. I just received my ballot.
Silverglate is the last candidate listed on the slate. Robert L. Freedman is the other petition candidate.
Neither has fangs or a Hitler mustache doodled onto their photograph. Apparently Harvard decided to forgo the least sophisticated effort to skew the vote. However, the administration did send a “get out the vote” email to alumni that I have not been aware of in previous years.