Word: aalarms
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JUDGING from last week's controversy over the refusal of an employee of Kinko's Copies to print a flyer from the Association Against Learning in the Absence of Religion and Morality (AALARM) opposing University Health Services (UHS) funding for abortion, it would be easy to conclude that the world had been turned upside down...
Members of AALARM picketed, saying their civil liberties had been abridged. The same publicity hounds who garnered national headlines for their advocacy of "family values" (what AALARM takes to mean the suppression of those different from them) piously held signs marked "Boycott Oppressors" and "Thought Control...
...next day, the executive board of Defeat Homophobia, a group that has consistently supported those silenced by society, published a letter in The Crimson enthusiastically endorsing the employee's refusal to print AALARM's fliers. The employee--who is gay--said he "had a deep problem with an organization opposed to my existence...
THIS is a coldly logical perspective. Were I that employee I, too, would feel the urge to snub AALARM in any way possible. But if Kinko's employees deny AALARM their service, and Gnomon and Harvard University Copy do the same, then AALARM's freedom to disseminate information will be inhibited...
...true that AALARM was permitted to use the slower, featureless and poorer quality self-service copiers. But today, denying access to the best technology is tantamount to censorship. Why not, for that matter, deny an organization the use of a phone service, claiming that it is still free to go door-to-door...