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Why we need civic education
At SUNY Purchase, a student recently appeared on a campus television channel wearing blackface and making comments that some viewers found racially offensive. Debate rages about what to do. It is not a constructive debate -- but it is an informative one. Here is how various students interviewed by the local paper understand (or fail to understand) the issue:
"On some level I feel it's freedom of speech," said student senate member Emily Griffiths of Cutchogue, Long Island. "But on the same level, it's like allowing the KKK to march on Washington, D.C. Why are people OK with that?"Griffiths defended the Purchase Student Government Association's efforts to quell the controversy, including pulling the offending show and temporarily banning new programming while it creates formal programming standards. Students on both sides aren't well informed about matters of free speech, she said.
"It's weird because it's an arts campus so a lot of the students are about free expression," Griffiths said.
[...]
Several students agreed there should be formal guidelines. Some were OK with restricting speech that could be deemed offensive.
"Our whole reputation is at stake," said Nicholas Freely of Monroe, who is in the design technology program. "I don't want future applicants to look at the campus and say, 'That's the school with the whole blackface thing. I don't want to go there.' "
These are the positions of students that do not understand either what free speech is or what legal obligation their university has to uphold the constitutional rights of its students. If some sort of sense that free speech might be at issue here, they don't sense it strongly enough to be able to register their own illogic when they suggest that offensive speech should be less free than other forms of expression. Others seem neither to appreciate that they are advocating censorhip, nor to grasp that when offensive expression is silenced by a university, something far more precious than reputation is lost. The muddled quality of these comments, made entirely unselfconsciously by students who are acting in what they clearly understand to be the most thoughtful and socially responsible manner they can, speaks loudly to the massive, creeping ignorance of a generation that, as numerous studies have shown, knows a lot more about popular cartoon characters than the Bill of Rights. You can't know what you are losing if you don't even understand what you have.
Posted by acta online at March 5, 2006 09:53 PM
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Comments
I would like to thank you for your words on this whole incident. I've been waiting and waiting for someone to call this story out on how ridiculous it is.
As the station manager for Purchase TV I've had my name dragged through the mud because of this incident (I've had students call for my resignation and even my expulsion from SUNY Purchase), all because I let this kid have a show on our closed-circuit station.
I felt that even if I may have thought what he was doing was ridiculous, or even offensive, it was his right to be able to produce the show as long as he did not cross it over into some sort of hate program (it was just a slightly moronic student who didn't realize what he was doing could be considered "offensive").
Just a week prior our student senate had voted to uphold every student's right to free speech and expression on the television station, and then... A week later, someone is offended and all of a sudden everyone is going back on their words because they are fearful of being labeled racist-sympathizers or something.
The hypocrisy of it all amazes me. Comments like the one Griffiths made about the KKK being able to march on Washington... I live here in the District, and I hate the Klan (as most people do), but I do feel that they have a right to their freedom of assembly as long as they go through the proper channels. If it upsets me, I don't have to go down there and listen to their ridiculousness. On that note-- If I really want to, I could stage some sort of counter-demonstration.
Just like this response to a Klan rally, the offended members of the campus community could have simply taken the next week's time slot to offer some sort of diversity workshop program to help students education on issues like blackface.
Ugh!
Sorry this is so long-winded. As a member of the Purchase college community I don't really seem to be allowed to hold this sort of opinion. I should just have the views most students at our campus seem to have, Free speech! Unless it offends anyone... In which case, you better be swift in silencing it.
--Sam
Posted by: Sam Jaffe at March 14, 2006 10:32 PM
I believe in conditioning. I go by the idea that people's behavior are influenced by conditioning. Therefore if you are brought up well, you too will become caring.
It is a fact that people can be manipulated, intimidated and coerced. Might is not right. Media has an amplifying effect on speech. Yes, cartoons might be pervasive but it doesn't protect you like the Bill of Rights.
I pay a fee to run PTV and it's my right to protest what is done with my money. On the street it's called raising hell. Economic divestment works wonders- look at what it did to apartheid in the 80's.
Protest doesn't always works but I'm very happy people took enough notice to get a code of conduct initiated.
Posted by: Francisco Daum at May 5, 2007 03:33 PM