How President Wright is in the wrong about free speech

Admittedly, it would be unfair to expect much from a Convocation speech. For the faculty, such events are pure academic banality and nothing annoys a bunch of newly- anointed college freshmen more than being packed into the gymnasium à la a high school assembly. That being said, I didn’t expect James Wright to give me goose-bumps. And because I still have my two front teeth, all I really, really wanted for Convocation was some kind of vision for the on-coming academic year.

On that account, I think President Wright fared reasonably well. His decision to address free speech at Dartmouth, undoubtedly one of the hot topics on campus, was entirely appropriate. What is more critical to an academic institution than the ability to debate and discuss ideas? If Wright’s speech is any indication, free speech will be a major focus at Parkhurst for the year to come and rightfully so.

Dartmouth needs to be a place where arguments and assumptions and conclusions are tested - and, then, tested some more. This is as it should be. Dartmouth students are incredibly generous and willing to serve, concerned about moral and ethical dilemmas, and supportive of one another.

All pretty good stuff.

At Dartmouth no code or regulation restrains the right to the free expression of ideas. If it did we would lose something critical to our intellectual purpose and to our core values.

This would be wonderful too…if only it were true.

The fact remains that speech regulations permeate Dartmouth, often in support of the very “orthodoxy” and “political correctness” that Wright seems to rhetorically dismiss.

In part, President Wright is correct - nowhere does the College explicitly deny freedom of speech. But this only tells part of the story. For all the talk about supporting discourse on campus, implicit regulations bog down the major conduit for campus dialogue - publications.

The publication distribution policy stands as perhaps the most obvious form of silent censorship. As any journalist (including this one) will attest, creating content is only half the battle. Without an efficient means of attracting a readership, a publication’s contents remain virtually un-written. The College’s ban on door-to-door distribution essentially wipes out the most effective means for spreading ideas and, consequently for raising discourse.

According to Director of Student Activities Linda Kennedy, the administration’s rationale for the ban goes like this: door to door distribution causes unnecessary dorm clutter. The College could adopt a subscription policy (like the one that already exists on campus for the New York Times), but subscriptions would force students to identify which publications they favor, thus stigmatizing students with minority viewpoints. Therefore, the only options left are the ineffective “publication distribution centers” or the more costly and unsightly publications dispensers as used by The Dartmouth.

This is all tedious nonsense. A few sheets of paper outside my doorstep every two weeks hardly qualify as “clutter.” But given that ORL Dean Martin Redman seems to be pretty adamant about keeping the hall-ways of the East Wheelock Cluster post-card perfect, a subscription service seems to be reasonable. Kennedy’s concern for those students with unpopular viewpoints seems good-natured enough, but the argument is clearly absurd. If a student were so concerned with appearing politically neutral I am certain that he or she could arrange a more discrete method for delivery. That being said, a subscription service could certainly incite a few more political arguments between roommates, but is that really a bad thing? If the Dartmouth administration is as supportive of educated debate as Wright’s speech suggests, wouldn’t it be logical to make the resources required for intelligent discourse readily available?

But in Wright World, the testing of arguments and assumptions is only encouraged when it remains some abstract ideal unmarked by controversy. When put into practice, debate can get dirty. Feelings will be hurt. People will be offended. To those in the gilded halls of Parkhurst, free debate and dialogue is at constant odds with the “sensitivity” required for “learning and moral growth.” Basically, free speech is great, as long as the “Principle of Community” remains intact (read: as long as nobody complains).

Case and point: COSO’s 1998 actions against Dartmouth humor magazine The Jack O’Lantern. In late 1997, The Jacko caused somewhat of a campus uproar by publishing so-called “Eskimo Pick-Up Lines,” which included such classics as, “Just looking at you gets my Bering Strait,” and, “You’re so hot the igloo’s melting.” Whether it was the racial nature of the segment’s title or the utter tackiness of its jokes, some Dartmouth students found “Eskimo Pick-Up Lines” offensive. And that’s ok. But the waters got a bit murkier once COSO got involved. According to an op-ed published in The Dartmouth by then COSO student member, Christine Durocher, COSO decided to sanction The Jacko because “when so many students cried out, something had to be done.”

But what Ms. Durocher failed to realize was that indeed something had been done. That “stack of complaint letters” received by COSO wasn’t just any pile of papers, it was the product of a group of students exercising their right to openly disapprove of The Jacko’s actions. In essence, free speech is a two way street. Both sides maintain that freedom as long as they are willing to bear criticism for their actions.

Granted, COSO holds the power to strip the The Jacko (or any COSO organization) of its funding and, as Ms. Durocher noted, COSO resisted that temptation following the pick-up line incident. Ms. Durocher argued that, as the official publisher of The Jacko, COSO had a responsibility to ensure that The Jacko was complying with the sensitivity standards demanded by Dartmouth’s “Principle of Community.” But therein lies the very problem. The internal imposition of censorship is still censorship.

James Wright and the folks at COSO don’t seem to understand this. “COSO does not censor,” COSO Chair Linda Kennedy bluntly stated in the January 19, 1998 edition of The Dartmouth. James Wright pretty much echoes this sentiment in his Convocation address: “At Dartmouth no code or regulation restrains the right to the free expression of ideas.” But the combination of a powerful COSO and lack of distinction between what speech is protected and what is not leads to an incredibly precarious situation for free speech at Dartmouth. It may not be written in stone, but the regulation of speech at Dartmouth is a de facto reality. Under this system, freedom of speech depends more on the benign whims of the College than on any institutional protection for popular, unpopular, or sometimes offensive forms of expression. Under such circumstances, it’s only a matter of time before another controversial publication finds itself faced with COSO and the College’s silent censorship. But in Wright World, this hasn’t, doesn’t, and never will happen.