Undergraduates are potentially the greatest force for restoring liberty on campuses, once they understand the patronizing nature of special protections and selective enforcement. There were, in fact, four diehards for outright abolition on the ad hoc committee--Downs and all three of the students: Jason Shepard, president of the senior class, an openly gay student who had come out in a column in the mainstream campus newspaper and a member of the board of directors of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Campus Center; Amy Kasper, an Asian-American undergraduate; and Rebecca Bretz, a law student.
Those who worry about the future of liberty should take heart from these students. Shepard joined the committee, he tells me, wholly open-minded, but, like the other two students, he kept asking for a "justification" for the code. He was amazed by how little justification the proponents could offer. By the end of three weeks, he and the other two students arrived at a common position, "without caucusing," because of their skepticism about why anyone would want to silence anyone else at a university. "At first," Shepard says, "a lot of faculty members wrote us off, just assuming that being students, we blindly would support a speech code, especially because we were gay, female, and Asian-American female."
In March 1998, Shepard made a motion for outright "abolition" of the code; it attracted only two votes in addition to those of the students and of Donald Downs. From that moment on, Shepard felt obliged to abandon abolition and to work for the most free-speech-friendly committee report possible.
For Shepard, the year's deepest lesson was the gulf between the rhetoric of "minority" student leaders and the views of the constituencies they were supposed to represent. For example, the Ten Percent Society, a gay and lesbian organization on campus, voted in November 1998 on the majority and minority reports of the ad hoc committee. It split down the middle, barely favoring the majority report. On the gay student listserve, many students wrote about the essential value of free speech. The president of the society, however, sent a message saying that now that a vote had been taken, she expected them all to show solidarity and to end any opposition to the stronger version of the code. She informed Shepard, he told me sadly, that he was a disgrace to every gay student at Wisconsin.
To Shepard, this incident signaled "how this small number of leaders is so out of touch with actual minority students." In his words, "There is a handful of self-appointed leftist activists who claim the right to speak for every minority on this campus." Far from being representative of those minorities, these activists "are some of the most authoritarian, oppressive people I've ever met." They try to intimidate a campus and chill debate: "Anyone who challenges their views is called `sexist,' `racist,' or `homophobe,'" he says.
"Although they claim to be fighting for equality and freedom for minority students," he concludes, "they silence any opposition within their minority group." Shepard saw the issue in straightforward terms. "It makes me cringe to defend bigots," he says, "but that's part of what defending the First Amendment is all about."
Amy Kasper also had a problem with so-called student leaders. They testified to almost "universal support" of the code, she tells me, when, in fact, the student body appeared deeply divided on the issue. In the end, she observes, the student government and all minority associations voted to endorse the majority report, but only 3 percent of Wisconsin students had bothered voting for the student government, while the minority groups were divided and had low numbers involved on this issue. Like Shepard, she also thought that everyone simply assumed that the two of them, "students from historically oppressed groups," instinctively would support the code. They were denounced as "dupes" and "traitors" for opposing it.
Kasper had fought against the code from the beginning. Believing that free speech was indispensable to fundamental rights and academic freedom, she was shocked to discover that a faculty code existed at all, and she believed it an obvious violation of the federal and state constitutions. Further, she says, fighting bigotry by means of oppression was useless. Indeed, she insists, it "has the opposite effect; it makes people bitter; and it is a horrible assault upon the conscience."
"The tide is changing," she says. She is sure her generation understands the sad irony of fighting for equal rights with arbitrary power: "History constantly has shown us that every time you give a coercive authority the power to censor, it is abused, and minority groups suffer the most."
Like Kasper, Rebecca Bretz was convinced from the start that there was something absurd about a speech code at a university. Early on, she notes, the three students were in agreement with each other, and, a rarity on committees with a faculty presence, were the most insistent voices. "We all wanted to know what our professors really thought. We didn't want them to be muzzled or gagged."
For Bretz, the fundamental issue was deeper than the legal or semantic technicalities that the committee kept debating: "How could we, as students, expect to have freedom of speech ourselves without our faculty having it?" In her view, the ability to hear both what other people believed and how they spoke was an essential part of her own freedom.
Once the motion for abolition failed, Bretz, Kasper, Shepard, and Donald Downs worked to get the best possible minority report. As Bretz explains, "We fought for abolition, but it was a futile effort." The question became, "What is the next best thing?" Her decision was to work to get the code as close as possible to freedom of expression. She found the situation on the ad hoc committee inherently ironic. The issue was faculty freedom, and the loudest voices on its behalf were those of the students. "We were somewhat surprised at this," she says dryly.
Professor Robert Drechsel, chairman of the committee, tells me one could not overemphasize the "extraordinary importance" of the students on the committee: "The students forced us to consider the most fundamental issues, and they put repeal on the table. They had a great impact by saying, `You're protecting us, but we don't want that protection.' They were articulate and courageous."
When Professors Stood Up
In November 1998, the University Committee endorsed the majority report and passed it along to the Faculty Senate for consideration. The Faculty Senate would discuss it at meetings in December and February, then vote on the report in March 1999. The December meeting of the Faculty Senate, however, surprised all parties and changed everything. One after another, in a wholly uncoordinated event, close to 20 faculty members spoke, almost all standing to reject both the majority and minority reports and to call for abolition, pure and simple. To the astonishment of both sides, the issue stirred not politically correct passions but passions for liberty. Individuals who never had spoken up publicly or expansively on free speech and academic freedom now found their voices; senators who skipped routine meetings now attended to make their views known.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
nfl jerseys|11.15.10 @ 2:50AM|#
jxdthdgh