Posted on 12/09/2005 6:07:01 PM PST by HardcoreRepublican
The following is a press release from the FIRE about Stetson University's controversial magazine, Common Sense.
Stetson University Outlaws Jay Leno Administrators Shamelessly Ban Student Magazine, Harangue Advertisers December 8, 2005
FIRE Press Release
DELAND, Fla., December 8, 2005—Stetson University has announced that parody, “derogatory” or “demeaning” comments, and even jokes from The Tonight Show are out of bounds for its students. Stetson’s chilling declarations came after the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) protested the private Florida university’s censorship of a student magazine.
“Stetson’s Orwellian policies should scare every student on its campus,” remarked FIRE President David French. “If saying anything that could be considered ‘derogatory’ is outlawed at Stetson, its students are taking a risk by speaking at all.”
Stetson promises its students that it will provide a “liberal education” and respect “[t]he value of diverse persons and differing ideas in an educational community.” But a group of students recently learned that these promises were empty when they were denied permission to distribute the first issue of their new magazine, Common Sense, because of the magazine’s viewpoint. Senior Vice President James Beasley ordered staffers to cease distributing the paper in an October 31 letter because they had printed a Jay Leno joke about illegal immigration and superimposed a question mark over a rainbow flag-draped dormitory window. Beasley claimed that these items “targeted” Mexicans and “the sexual orientation of a particular person.”
The director of Stetson’s Cross Cultural Center, Shelley Wilson, even went so far as to send an e-mail from her university account telling at least one Common Sense advertiser that the magazine’s viewpoint “supports the worst of our society and makes it less safe for everyone.” Worse yet, this conduct is only Stetson’s latest assault on freedom of the press: the university shut down another student publication in 2003 for printing a racy April Fools’ Day edition.
FIRE wrote Stetson President H. Douglas Lee on November 2, reminding him that freedom of speech “exists precisely to protect speech that some members of a community may find controversial or ‘offensive.’” FIRE also requested that Stetson reject its policy of prior review over student publications. Stetson’s lawyer, Mark G. Alexander, rejected these requests in a November 21 letter that, among other problems, showed a woeful misunderstanding of the First Amendment. Alexander denied that the joke about Mexican immigration could be “legitimate political discourse” and stated that Jay Leno jokes might not be acceptable if made by Stetson community members. He also claimed that the parody “targeted a particular individual,” even though there was no way to tell who that individual might be from the magazine.
“Someone who believes that jokes or derogatory and insensitive comments cannot be legitimate political discourse must have missed every episode of Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show, as well as every Presidential election,” noted FIRE Director of Legal and Public Advocacy Greg Lukianoff. “And to say that showing an unidentifiable window with a rainbow flag in it ‘targets’ someone is to strip all meaning from the term.”
FIRE’s French went on to say, “Freedom of the press cannot exist at a place where the authorities read a magazine before it can even be distributed. Where this occurs on a national level, we call it a police state. At Stetson, it’s apparently just business as usual.”
Parody Poopers.
That's liberal freedom: you can do whatever you want as long as you do exactly as you are told.
Well now, it appears that the "Bitch Slappin' Brigade" needs to make an appearance at Stetson U.
Somebody needs some sense slapped back into them.
LVM
I'm delighted with this action. Maybe if they block out Leno because of political correctness, a few leftwing eyes will be opened.
I don't suppose that Bush-Nazi comparisons are off-limits, though. Nor are descriptions of Republicans as "goose-steppers."
So long as they pass muster with the PC Police Taliban.
That being said, aren't all schools liberal...
Yeah--And it ain't particularly cheap to send a kid there.
Besides, who can take a school with a team name like the "Hatters" seriously?
Ahh...American education.
Of course not.
I was just thinking - ouch - that with all the crap we see and hear about what these schools do, it might be time to take all this crap to the legal system.
A public college / university is one thing, a private university another.
Free speech rights, etc. Student rights, etc.
Seems to me that it would be real easy to go after the public side of the house first.
Start firing these nut job, so called, professors (of bull$hit) left and right.
Given what we see happen, legal system wise, in the non-academic world this should be fairly easy to do.
All the students need is a "political" org to turn to for help - something like an ACLU, only not bent on destroying the country.
I'm over-simplyfying, I know, but there has to be a mechanism to stop this madness...filth...socialistic brain washing.
LVM
About the only thing that universities respond to is a potential loss of revenue....time for Stetson alumni to close their checkbooks.
Everything not forbidden is compulsory.
They respect all points of view equally... but some points of view are more equal than others.
How interesting. I own a house just on the edge of campus...hmmmmm. What might I park there?
FIRE’s French went on to say, “Freedom of the press cannot exist at a place where the authorities read a magazine before it can even be distributed. Where this occurs on a national level, we call it a police state. At Stetson, it’s apparently just business as usual.”
I love these guys. Wouldn't it be great if the PC university crowd could be held accountable for their stupidity. They have thrived in a vacuum too long. Perhaps a new generation of enlightened traditionalists will hold their feet to the fire.
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/schools/348
Here's another great salvo from the guys at FIRE.
"But the truth is that Stetson’s repression is much more reminiscent of “the worst of our society” than a couple of jokes. Stetson’s conduct sends a clear message to its students: the administration there is saying not only that it’s okay to respond to speech one does not like with coercion, not moral witness, but also that lying is acceptable. Stetson has the audacity not just to censor its student press (repeatedly, not just now) but to do so after promising its students things like “critical thinking, imaginative inquiry, creative expression, and lively intellectual debate.”
Keep up the pressure "Fire." You're doing a great job.
I was about to make that same point. Anyone who has ever been through Deland (and that can happen rather quickly) knows that Stetson is hard enough to find even when you know where to look.
"I was about to make that same point. Anyone who has ever been through Deland (and that can happen rather quickly) knows that Stetson is hard enough to find even when you know where to look."
Good point, but if you missed the university driving through town, you are a bigger moron than some of the university leadership. My god, it is the only thing in that town...how in the world could you miss that. The Stetson Business School was ranked number 1 by the Princeton Review for the Best Campus Facilities in the nation.
"Stetson "University" is barely a community college. I think you can buy a degree on-line" - Wow, that means allot coming from an Embry Riddle graduate (?) who evaluates a university's educational quality on a television commercial. In addition to number 4 in the south, Stetson (not exactly harvard, but an avg SAT higher than than the eagles) is also listed in the Princeton Reviews 351 Best Colleges for 2004 and was noted in the Fiske guide as one of the "Best and most Interesting Universities".
"Yeah--And it ain't particularly cheap to send a kid there" - Stetson was recognized by US News & World Report as one of the "Best Values" in the South evaluating the relationship between quality of education and cost.
Besides, who can take a school with a team name like the "Hatters" seriously?" - Well, how can you argue with that. Go eagles.
Regarding the freedom of speech, there is not enough information here to make an informed opinion. If you single some kid's dorm room out in a school sponsored newspaper because he is gay, I believe that would open up the university to litigation.
Welcome to FR.
You take cheap shots at a few posters in your post, and you didn't ping them.
I don't get it. What the heck did Leno say?
-- Joe
"Regarding the freedom of speech, there is not enough information here to make an informed opinion. If you single some kid's dorm room out in a school sponsored newspaper because he is gay, I believe that would open up the university to litigation."
As far as I know from my reading, this is not a school sponsored newspaper. I believe that was stated in some of the supporting documents from the FIRE (thefire.org). Also, there is no mention of the individual's name or room number, etc on the back cover. that is hardly singling someone out.
If the school is not sponsoring the magazine, then I am not sure how they can control the content unless they threaten punishment to the students involved.
It is a pretty small school, the general public may not know him, but I am sure everyone on campus knows exactly who the guy is with the rainbow flag in his dorm window.
I was trying to inject a little humor. Little did I know someone with a liberal's sense of humor (none) would take it seriously.
My mother-in-law lives in Deland and I always dread going there. If the Lord ever decided to give this state am enema, I wouldn't want to be in Deland when it happens.
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