The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 76, No. 27, Ed. 1 Friday, May 19, 1989 Page: 3 of 8
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THE RICE THRESHER FRIDAY, MAY 19, 1989 3
Thresher and Campanile Buttheads giggle joyously over their recent graduation.
Speech
FROM PAGE 2
in a crowdcd theater. You cannot
cause a hostile atmosphere on cam-
pus."
"For the colleges not to deal with
the racial prejudice on campus is an
abdication of their responsibility in a
free society," said Ira Glasser, execu-
tive director of the American Civil
Liberties Union.
"When you pass a rule which
represses speech, you are avoiding
dealing with the underlying problem
and you're passing a rule whose
sweep is going to be broader than the
things you're trying to contain."
The most acrimonious and
lengthy debate has been at Stanford,
where memories of two racist inci-
dents within the past fifteen months
are fresh. On April 19, the Student
Conduct Legislative Council pro-
posed an anti-harassment proposal
to replace a withdrawn one that was
widely attacked as too restrictive.
The new proposal makes intentto
hurt or harass essential to prosecute
any offense, requires the offensive
remarks to be directly addressed t
RireThreshfr
Greg Kahn, Sarah L. Lcedy
Editors-in-Ch ief
Ray Letulle Business Manager
NEWS
Jennifer Rios, Kurt Moeller Editors
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Cary Farris, Jim Kelly.Mcgan Dixon,
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Jen Cooper Editor
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SPORTS
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Hung Nguyen
BACK PAGE
Jay Yates Editor
PRODUCTION
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PHOTOGRAPHY
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OP/ED Steve Lait, Cartoonist
FEATURES Jim Kelly, Editor
BUSINESS
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PHONE: 527-4801
© COPYRIGHT 1989
The Rice Thresher, the official student newspaper at
Rice University since 1916, is published each Friday
during the school year, except during examination
periods and holidays, by the students ot Rice Univer-
sity. Editorial and business offices are located on the
second floor of the Ley Student Center, P.O. Box
1892, Houston, Texas, 77251. Advertising informa-
tion availableupon request. Mail subscription rateper
semester: $15.00 domestic, $30 international via first
class mail. Unsigned editorials represent the majority
opinion of the Editorial Board. All other pieces repre-
sent the opinion of the author. Obviously.
the people involved, and says the
offense "must be expressed in
words, pictures, or symbols that are
commonly understood to convey, in
a direct and visceral way, hatred or
contempt for human beings of the
sex, race, color, handicap, sexual
orientation, or national and ethnic
origin in question."
The proposal still must pass
through a complex ratification proc-
ess, including a public notice and
comment period and approval by
Stanford President Donald M. Ken-
nedy. Upon passage it will become
part of the student conduct code, so
punishments would be within the
existing range of penalties, from
reprimand to suspension or expul-
sion.
"The new proposal is a marked
improvement over the old one, but it
docs have serious flaws that need to
be addressed," commented the April
24th editorial in the Stanford Daily.
The paper said the use of "ac-
cepted community standards" ulti-
mately putthe majority in judgement
of what is ultimately a minority right.
"How would black civil rights
activists have fared in the South of
the mid-1960s against laws relying
on 'matters of social consensus?"
The original proposal, which was
attacked by the university's general
counsel and a constitutional law
professor, prohibited "obscenities,
epithets, and other forms of expres-
sion that by accepted community
standards degrade, victimize, stig-
matize, or perjoratively characterize
them on the basis of personal, intel-
lectual, or cultural diversity."
Professor Gerald Gunther com-
pared the anti-harassment proposals
to women's groups attempts to re-
strict pornography. In a letter to the
council, he wrote, "The refusal to
oppress offensive speech is one of
the most difficult obligations the
free-speech proposal imposed on all
of us. Yet it is also one of the First
Amendment's greatest glories and
indeed it is a central test of the com-
munity's commitment to free
speech. More speech, not less
speech, is the proper cure for offen-
sive speech."
Junior Canetta Ivy, a member of
the three person Council of Presi-
dents that heads student govern-
ment, strongly disagreed. "We don't
put as many restrictions on freedom
of speech as we should. You have to
set up something that tells students
what the limits are, what they can do,
and what they can't."
The anthropology and African-
American studies major admits that
the proposal is not in line with the
First Amendment but adds, "I'm not
sure it should be. We at Stanford are
trying to set a standard different
from what society at large is trying to
accomplish."
In a full two-page statement in the
February 8 Stanford Daily university
general counsels John Schwartz and
Iris Brest argued against strong re-
strictions on speech, saying that "a
university, more than any other insti-
tution, must preserve itself as a fo-
rum for the competition of ideas, and
in doing so, must tolerate the expres-
sion of ideas that some or most of us
find repugnant."
The statement said that as a pri-
vate university, Stanford was under
less restrictions than public universi-
ties or governments. It also added,
"No one has a right that another
person not hold an opinion, or ex-
press it."
That same day a contradictory
report, authored by philosophy pro-
fessor John Perry and graduate stu-
dent C.R. Douglas, was issued. They
rejected the First Amendment as a
guideline, saying, "We ought uphold
higher standards of what is appropri-
ate and what is inappropriate. There
is no reason we should uphold rules
that someone has established."
The next day the Daily strongly
supported the counsel's position
emphasizing universities' duty as a
place of exchange of diverse ideas,
biter Perry, a professor, and a stu-
dent debated the issue on the cam-
pus radio station.
Misclass
Correction
To the editors:
Although I appreciate the honor
of having part of my lecture q uoted in
t^hc "Misclass" section of the
Thresher, I am sorry to note that the
unnamed correspondent misquoted
me. First, the thalamus is a part of the
brain, not a gland. Second, the hypo-
thalamus is actually the part of the
brain that controls that controls the
activities you mentioned, not the
thalamus.
Evidence from psychology ex-
periments suggests that putting
jokes in lectures backfires: students
tend to remember the joke, but for-
get the proceeding and succeeding
content of the lecture. Your mis-
quote in the Misclass represents this
type of problem.
Henry L. Roediger III
Professor of Psychology
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Kahn, Greg & Leedy, Sarah L. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 76, No. 27, Ed. 1 Friday, May 19, 1989, newspaper, May 19, 1989; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245723/m1/3/: accessed May 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.