The Tufts Daily
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THE TUFTS DAILY
A culture of censorship
Editor-in-Chief
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Commencement 2012
Editorial
Daniel J. Rathman Editorial Craig Frucht Ethan Sturm
Editorial | Letters
This March, Tufts was recognized on an ignoble list: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) list of the “Twelve Worst Colleges for Free Speech.” In an editorial written at the time, the Daily argued that the university’s behavior in recent years did not justify Tufts’ placement on such a list. In light of events that occurred after this year’s Spring Fling, though, perhaps we were too hasty to defend the university. In an incident that took the campus by storm, it came to light during reading week that several members of the novice and varsity men’s crew teams had been suspended from partaking in the New England Championships, and both teams’ co-captains were stripped of their hardearned status. Their offense? Wearing shirts to Spring Fling that featured the text “check out our cox” above the silhouette of a boat. “Cox” is a common abbreviation for a “coxswain.” The disciplinary actions were taken after a bias incident was filed through the Bias Incident Reporting system on Tufts WebCenter that claimed the shirts were sexist and promoted sexual aggression. Students on campus and free speech advocates, including FIRE, were quick to criticize the decision to suspend the rowers. It soon became clear that the teams’ coaches and not the Tufts administration carried out the suspension. Still, shortly after the controversy erupted, University President Anthony Monaco sent an open letter to the team, saying that at his urging, the rowers would no longer be suspended and would be able to compete at the New England Championships. While the controversy died down after Monaco’s letter, the saga dealt Tufts a black eye, and it is the view of the Daily that the university needs to seriously reconsider how it handles free speech issues in the future. It is largely irrelevant that the decision to discipline the team members was made by the coaches and not the Tufts administration. Regardless of who decided to issue the suspension and strip the captains of their positions, students were still punished for expressing themselves by Tufts employees who were in a position of authority. Monaco’s letter stated that the team members were disciplined for making shirts in direct conflict with team policy and explicit instructions from coaches ordering them not to do so. However, graduating senior team members Chris Park and Michael Bai said that the team was never made aware of any such policy, nor that it was explicitly or clearly communicated to the team prior to Spring
Fling. While they acknowledge that coaches gave broad instructions regarding team behavior and that the shirts could have been perceived as offensive, they felt that the design of the shirts didn’t conflict with any team directions they were given. If this is the case, the crew team is owed an apology and an explanation from its coaches and from the Tufts administration, which apparently turned a blind eye to the situation until the university’s reputation was at stake. While Monaco made the right decision in overturning the suspension, his actions do not erase or excuse the outrage perpetrated against crew team members prior to his intervention. First, it is not certain that Monaco would have intervened had the situation not been rapidly snowballing into a public relations disaster for Tufts. More important, however, is the fact that Tufts students should not have to count on the protection of the individual at the very top of the Tufts administration to intercede and protect their right to free speech. Tufts must strive to protect free expression on all levels, whether the expression consists of political protests or penis jokes. For expression to be truly free, both must have the same level of protection, and all unpopular opinions must be protected. As a private institution, Tufts is not bound by constitutional guarantees of free speech, but Tufts is a weaker institution if it does not have an environment where open discussion can flourish. As the 2009 “Declaration on Freedom of Expression at Tufts University” says, certain limits can be imposed on free expression to ensure that community members, “regardless of background, are free from behavior that interferes with their ability to study, grow, and attain their full potential.” However, the men’s crew team members, by wearing the shirts, did not interfere with anybody’s Tufts experience. It is the belief of the Daily that not only should the members of the team not have been punished for wearing their shirts, but the shirts themselves in no way constituted bias. If the shirts were racist, sexist or homophobic, the punishment handed out might have been justified. But the shirts were anything but. To avoid beating around the bush, it’s true that the shirts, using the coxswain pun, intended to bring attention to the fact that the team members have penises. The shirts in no way, though, could sensibly be construed as being biased against women or promoting sexual aggression. The shirts were sexual in nature and possibly could
have offended some people’s sensibilities, but sexual does not equal sexist. This saga is an example of why the university needs to strongly reconsider revising its current bias incident reporting system, where incidents are reported via Tufts WebCenter and are possibly acted on by the Tufts administration through means like mediation and disciplinary action. The intention of the current system is noble: Students won’t feel there is a high barrier to reporting acts of bias. However, in execution, the system is highly flawed. It encourages students to deal with all perceived bias through official university channels, even if the bias was completely unintentional. Occasionally, students say or do things that inadvertently offend, but these occurrences should not be grouped with incidents where emotional harm was clearly directed at a certain group. However, given the current system for reporting bias incidents at Tufts, all situations are essentially lumped into the same group. When frivolous incidents like “cox” T-shirts are associated with the bias incident reporting system, there is a “boy who cried wolf” effect, as some might take incidents of true bias and hate much less seriously. Just as importantly, the current bias incident reporting system has a chilling effect on expression at Tufts. Currently, Tufts students who are afraid of expressing themselves and occasionally pushing boundaries for fear that they may be dealt with through administrative action could simply decide not to express their unpopular views. Certainly the administration does not pursue disciplinary action on all reported bias incidents — or even list all of them on the reported bias incidents page on Tufts WebCenter — but the self-censoring fear of administrative action is still there for individuals who may push boundaries in their speech. This is especially problematic because, at least for the Class of 2012, the term “bias incident” is commonly associated with the spring 2009 incident in which a student spat at, threatened and shouted racial slurs at several members of the Korean Students Association. The current bias incident system lumps that into the same category as the crew shirt, with the implication being that using mildly risque humor or holding unpopular beliefs is simply wrong. Tufts needs to make an effort to more clearly delineate incidents of bias, hate and unintentional offense if the reporting system is to be taken seriously and serve its purpose.
devon colmer
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