Campus Threats

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-university-of-chicago-gun-threat-met-20151130-story.html


On November 20, 2015 a student at the University of Chicago threatened to kill 16 students and staff at the University. This engineer was charged for making online threats that shut down the University for the day. Saturday night after threatening to kill the student, staff, the university campus police at 10 am.m, he also threatened to kill himself. He told the federal officials on the scene that this was his response to the police shooting of Laquan McDonald.

The student took his anger to another level by expressing his emotions. In the book Free Speech by Warburton, he discusses the four features that identify the dangers of the internet.  The lack of quality control and huge potential audience were the main factors in this students posts, but that was what he was aiming for. He wanted to make a point by saying that the officer that shot McDonald was wrong and he shouldn't get away with it. He was stating that is was "an eye for an eye". Using the first amendment as a way out only works if you don't take advantage of it and keep people out of harms way.

Campus Threats - Alissa Apecechea

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/11/columbine-massacre-rpg-creator-banned-from-college-campus-film-festival/

           On November 18, 2015, the Columbine Massacre RPG video game maker, Danny Ledonne, was not allowed to attend the film festival at Colorado Adams State University. They did not let him attend the festival because the university felt that he was considered unsafe and a threat to the university. Adams state came out saying that “the game is about shooting students” and that is why they felt it would be unsafe to bring him to a college campus. This video game is said to recreate the terrible event of a high school shooting that once took place. When trying to decide if they should let this man come to the festival, there were many avenues people had to consider. The letter banning him said, “In this post – Columbine, hypersensitive world of mass shootings and violence on college campus’ nationwide, it is my duty to balance the free speech and individual rights against the public safety of the many. Although, Mr. Ledonne’s behavior has not yet breached the realm of violation of our laws, my recommendation to ban him from campus is sound, rational and errs on the side of public safety” (arstechnica.com)

            Ledonne ended up responding to this by saying that his “goal in creating the game it to help everyday audiences understand the world of the killers because in doing so, we might move closer to understanding and reaching actual solutions to the ongoing epidemic of school shootings” (arstechnica.com)

            For these reasons, the school was worried about the safety of their students if this man was to come to campus and attend their film festival. Although he claims not to be violent and that he is just trying to express what he believes would help create solutions to stop these violent shootings and killings in schools across the nation.

            Lewis mentions in his book on free expression that, “the constitutional right of free expression is powerful medicine in a society as diverse and populous as ours. It is designed to intend to remove governmental restraints from the area of public discussion, putting the decision as to what views shall be voiced largely into the hands of each of us, in the hope that use of each freedom will ultimately produce a more capable citizenry and more polity in the belief that no other approach would comport with the premise of individual dignity and choice upon which our political system rests” (Lewis pg 132). This passage can relate to this situation because although there has not been a governmental restraint to this video game and it indirectly is free speech since he is not physically hurting or killing anyone, some may argue that he is just using his right to try to help society. Others can argue that it could potentially threaten the safety of the college campus as people could then get ideas from his video game, even though that was not the intention of his game. This was a very controversial issue that involved campus threats of free expression.

The Amherst "Lord Jeffs" and "Institutional" Racism

The University of Amherst mascot isn't the lamest, but students are still asking for Lord Jeffery Amherst to leave even more than TU students with Captain 'Cane, and for good reason. "Lord Jeff," as he's colloquially known, was a pre-Revolutionary War British commander who advocated the use of smallpox blankets to kill off Native Americans. Germ warfare is a large part of what contributed to the widespread death of most Native American tribes–obviously having a proto-white-supremacist "Lord Jeff" as a mascot is a touchy subject for many students of minorities.

But the mascot is, ironically, only the representative of the real problem at the school: a wide acceptance and toleration of racism. In response to "Black Lives Matter" protests, anti-protests of the thinly veiled racist slogan "All Lives Matter" and the disgustingly petulant/ironic "Free Speech" sprang up.

Those complaining about how dismissing "Lord Jeff" would be a crime against free speech are missing the point: students who love Amherst and want to continually make it a better place wish to distance themselves from an awful figure of history, not sanitize that figure. In fact, leaving Lord Jeffery Amherst as the mascot would do more to sanitize his image than taking him down. I am sure that if this conversation were about historical figures more widely recognized as unsavory, it would be a much shorter conversation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/us/with-diversity-comes-intensity-in-amherst-free-speech-debate.html?_r=0

–Kyle Doud

A NY Times Opinion Piece: Feigning Free Speech on Campus

Since the 1980s, college campuses have started instilling speech codes for their students and faculty to abide by. This has imposed on people's intrinsic rights that was given to them by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Private universities can easier get away with enacting these speech codes because they are privately funded. However, it is a person's given right to freedom of expression and if need be, they have the opportunity to fight against what is stripping them of it.

This article stated, "In a study of 392 campus speech codes last year, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education... found that 65 percent of the colleges had policies that in our view violated the Constitution's guarantee of the right to free speech." Then the article used an example saying, "Last year, incoming Harvard freshmen were pressured by campus officials to sign an oath promising to act with 'civility' and 'inclusiveness' and affirming that 'kindness holds a place on par with intellectual attainment'." These speech codes are in some ways controlling people's thoughts and actions, which is, in fact, not true freedom, at all.

It is understandable for colleges and universities to want their students to act kindly and justly, but by having these stringent speech codes in place, it hinders them more. A closing sentence that the article stated was, "Students can't learn how to navigate democracy and engage with their fellow citizens if they are forced to think twice before they speak their mind." This topic can and obviously has caused debate, but for the free expression advocate, it is not right to impose on what was given to someone in the First Amendment to try and get the specific behavior a university is wanting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/opinion/feigning-free-speech-on-campus.html?_r=1

-Bailey Clampitt

Jena Six

Johnell Celistan

Jena six was about six African American students that attended a high school in a town called Jena which was located in Louisiana. They were arrested after being involved in a fight that was caused by a racial act that was being performed. There were some white students at the high school who decided it was ok to hang nooses from a tree in the high school courtyard. Two violent confrontations between white and black students had taken place. The threat to free expression in this case was taken too far by the white students who thought it was ok to offend the African American students at the high school by hanging nooses from the tree. Even though they were expressing a freedom of expression that was not ok because it caused problems and it caused a huge uproar in the city of Jena. Freedom of expression applies only if it doesn’t offend someone or can potentially start a riot. In this case the white student’s intentions was to offend the African Americans by being racist towards them. This happen back in 2006, and it hit the media hard, because the black students were being criminally charged for beating up the students who were involved with the hanging of the nooses. They were facing charges of second-degree murder.

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/7/10/the_case_of_the_jena_six

Texas university professor amends his 'God bless you' ban

By Ruiming Li

FoxNews published news on September 14, 2015 which mentioned a Texas university professor forbade students say "God bless you" in class.

This professor issued a syllabus which told students should avoided some behaviors in class, include using electronic devices and saying "God bless you." Texas university provided statement that this professor tried to avoid some potentially disruptive behaviors which can influnce the learning environment in classroom, such as using cellphone. However, the ban of saying "God bless you" caused some people's criticize. A student said that syllabus violate the freedom of religion in First Amendment, but some students had no objection of that syllabus, because they thought "it's the teacher's classrooms".


Source: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/09/14/texas-professor-orders-students-to-refrain-from-saying-god-bless-calls-it/

Abortion Debate Censored at Christ Church College

By: Megan Grier

At Christ Church College, which is part of the University of Oxford in England, a group called Oxford Students for Life was going to host a debate about “abortion culture," with the pro side being argued for by historian Tim Stanley and the opposing side argued for by editor Brendan O’Neil. A protest was planned by OxRev Fems, but the day before the debate, college censors voted to rescind the group’s permission to use the Blue Boar Lecture Theatre, causing the Oxford Students for Life to cancel their event. The OSFL invited WomCam to co-host a debate with them, but they were not open to the idea, instead suggesting they find alternative events. It was wrong of the censors to vote to rescind their permission. First of all, the debate was voluntary, so if people didn’t want to hear it, they didn’t have to. Secondly, it was a debate, so both sides were being presented. This actually would have been the fairest, most intellectual way to talk about this issue on the campus, but instead they were shut down because some people didn’t agree with the group that was putting it on. This definitely goes against Lewis’ idea about freedom for the thought we hate. OSFL should not have been silenced just because a lot of people disagreed with them, especially when they were giving equal speaking time and privileges to the arguments that they themselves disagreed with.

The article that I got this information from is here: http://www.cherwell.org/news/college/2014/11/17/christ-church-refuses-to-hold-quotabortion-culturequot-debate