Word: blsaã
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...Students Association (BLSA), at a Nov. 18 town hall meeting, suggested that the committee expand the Law School’s anti-harassment code in order to shield students from future racial insensitivity. Because the Law School’s code already proscribes actions that constitute racial harassment, the BLSA??€™s request must target speech. Any expanded harassment policy that would cover more than actions, regardless of what one chooses to call it, amounts to a speech code and therefore subverts the principles of the First Amendment. If enacted, it would be a significant blow to free...
...quieting free speech is exactly what the BLSA??€™s suggestions involve. To punish students for expressing ideas, even ones that offend others on campus, stifles open debate. Any attempt by the Law School to dictate what its students can and cannot say, however noble the intent of such restrictions, effectively muzzles the free expression of ideas...
Still more unfortunate was BLSA??€™s criticism of attempts to hold public debate on these matters as racially insensitive...
Surely some response was in order. But it is a great shortcoming of this reaction that it failed to differentiate varying degrees of offensiveness. Neither the administration’s e-mail nor BLSA??€™s statement left room for the possibility that each of the incidents be considered on its own account. Instead they were condemned in the same rhetorical breath...
...anger over Nesson’s proposal makes one wonder whether objective discourse is possible at all when race is concerned. BLSA??€™s demand that Nesson be censured simply for wanting to ask whether Scholl deserves punishment implies that race-related disputes should be resolved by suppressing debate and unreflectively condemning anyone involved in the controversy...