On the one hand, I think it’s pretty funny. On the other I think it’s kind of dumb. Then again, Dean deserves it for saying something really stupid and, if the kids just sat there with flags, I’ve got no problem. I’m sure they had to endure plenty of jeers from “Generation Dean” as it were. Also, it seems that our friends at the Dartmouth Review might have been tangentially involved. The only really scary thing to come out of this is buried all the way in the last paragraph:

Laurel Stavis, a spokeswoman for Dartmouth College, said it wasn’t clear to her whether the demonstration or the posters violated school policy.

“There’s no speech code,” she said. “There’s a difference between speech and behavior. We do have a college regulation that speaks to offensive behavior, but not to offensive speech.”

This is a clear case of student speech, it’s not “behavior.” I think Danimal can back me up that the courts have long held visual symbols to be speech. Tinker vs. DesMoines jumps immediately to mind. Yeah, this case is a lot different than that, but it deals with a visual symbol. I’m sure that Generation Dumb will be calling for a speech code at Dartmouth soon, God. What is the world coming to? And, furthermore, who cares if speech (or behavior for that matter) is merely “offensive”? That standard is applied much too often in academia, where feelings and motivations are more important than results. Reminds me of a man who once strained a gnat and swallowed a camel, but that’s a story for a different time….

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2003 at 03:17 by Timothy and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.