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