ACUHO-I News Blog

A dust-up at Tufts University has stirred the questions of who is allowed to make fun of whom, the limits of political correctness, the value of satire and the potential offensiveness of satire as well.

Alice Pang, a candidate for Community Union Senate, created posters advertising her campaign. “ALICE PANG” is printed across the top and beneath this, “small person. big ideas.” Pang’s picture is below this next to “Hurrah!” in parenthesies, and below that, “2013 senate; vote on thursday.” In an effort to poke fun at the what he percieved as excessive political correctness on campus, In-Goo Kwak, a student from South Korea, made a similar poster featuring his name and photo. He’s not running for Community Union Senate though. His tagline is “squinty eyes. BIG VISION.” Next to his picture is (“Kimchi!”) and on the bottom of the poster is “Prease vote me! I work reary hard!”

Predictably, many Tufts students are upset by Kwak’s poster. A number of organizations signed a letter denoucing Kwak’s action, and the director of the campus Asisan Center called him to complain on behalf of other students. Kwak seems bemused by the whole situation, noting that none of the offended students spoke directly to him (in fact, he attended a meeting on the subject unrecognized so he could hear what students thought of his parody). Kwak said he appologized to Pang, and she graciously accepted. He also finds it odd that many students expect him to be punished for an action he feels is protected by the First Amendment.

For its part, the Tufts administration has been taking a watch-and-wait stance, letting students discuss the situation without interference.

Have you faced issues such as this on your campus? Where’s the line between free speech and hate speech? Is that line a blurry one? How did you (or your administration) handle the situation?

A selection of college housing and student affairs headlines from InsideHigherEd.com. This week’s edition features two reports from the 2009 ACUHO-I Annual Conference & Exposition in Baltimore. Look for these on a weekly basis in the ACUHO-I news blog.

THE 3 A.M. PHONE CALL: College housing officers identify tactics to avert disaster and to respond after the fact:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/29/acuhoi

LEEDING THE PACK: While Duke showcased its new platinum-rate residence hall at an annual meeting of college housing officers, other campus reps talked getting certified on a budget:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/30/leed

OBAMA’S PUSH FOR FREE ONLINE COURSES: Administration may propose “open” classes and create a “National Skills College” to coordinate offerings at high schools and community colleges. Other measures for two-year institutions may include $10 billion facilities loan fund:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/29/ccplan

SUPREME COURT PUNTS: Justices opt — for now — not to resolve dispute over right of public universities to bar anti-gay bias and right of Christian groups to be recognized as student organizations:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/01/truth

A selection of college housing and student affairs headlines from InsideHigherEd.com. Look for these on a weekly basis in the ACUHO-I news blog.

RANKINGS RANCOR AT CLEMSON: University responds harshly to official’s assertions of data “manipulation” to rise on the U.S. News charts, denying unethical behavior — but directly challenging few of her allegations:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/04/clemson

HOME DISSECTION KITS AND MORE: Thanks to sets of do-it-yourself experiment packages, lab science courses are slowly gaining acceptance in online delivery:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/05/science

NOT SO POLITICALLY INCORRECT: As College Democrats fight for official recognition at Liberty U., other liberal student groups maintain peaceful relationships at traditionally conservative institutions — and so do their conservative counterparts at more liberal institutions:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/02/groups

A student at Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania wanted to start a club. So she created a brochure about her intended group and distributed it on campus. College officials called the student to the dean’s office and told her she should follow established channels for creating a student group: Completing an application; showing that at least 10 students have an interest in the group; and getting a faculty adviser. The student also says, however, that Community College of Allegheny County officials questioned the purpose of her group, and advised her not to move forward with its formation. College officials say their concerns were centered on preventing unauthorized solicitation on campus.

Christine Brashier was attempting to form a chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, and she says the intent of her proposed group was the real problem, that the leadership of her school is attempting to thwart her attempts to start a pro-concealed-carry organization. Brashier contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (better known as FIRE), and FIRE wrote college president Alex Johnson with their concerns. In this Boston Globe story, representatives of FIRE claim that similar issues have arisen at other institutions as well.

Student Maciej Murakowski published an appallingly offensive web page of “jokes”–mostly about sex and at the expense of women–which offended and frightened some of his peers at the University of Delaware. He was suspended in the tension-threaded days after 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech, on April 19, 2007. The brother of a female student reported to campus police that his sister who lived in the same residence hall as Murakowski, had found his web page and was frightened.

Her fear doesn’t seem unfounded: Murakowski writes about an affection for black gloves, and a fantasy about choking someone while wearing them. He makes some pretty odd similes, saying gloves “make me feel menacing,” like OJ Simpson, not “the spindly pale virgin” he declares himself to be. Also on the page were meticulous instructions on how to skin a cat and jokes about rape, kidnapping and torture. (Sounds like a total laff fest, right?)

Murakowski and his lawyer, David Finger, sought damages. The original intent of the lawsuit was reinstatement, but the plodding pace of the legal system and time solved that problem: His one semester suspension expired and he completed his engineering degree. The university required he get a letter from a mental health professional certifying he was not a threat to himself or others before he returned to class, which he did. However, Murakowski was also told not to visit his residence hall during the suspension, but he did twice. He was also already on disciplinary probation at the time of the suspension, for a copyright violation. These things mitigated Judge Mary Pat Thynge’s judgment that his suspension was inappropriate and the web page was protected speech–albeit the kind of protected speech that isn’t attractive or substantial to most people, but protected all the same. Thynge found the university was justified for suspending Murakowski for his other transgressions. Thus, Murakowski was only awarded $10. (Most of which will probably go to his lawyer.)

As you can see on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s news blog, the case makes it hard for higher education officials to know how to differentiate between a justified suspension–because of a student’s seeming capacity for acts that harm himself or others–and an unnecessary intrusion into free speech. What do you make of it?