The Dartmouth Varsity baseball team lost all four games of the two double-headers they played against Brown on the weekend of April 16 and 17. Several players attributed the team’s poor performance to the lack of heckling from the normally boisterous fans. But what accounted for the unusual silence? As the story goes, Safety and Security threatened to remove the regular hecklers from the game if they did not shape up and quiet down. Once The D ran an article on the restricted heckling at the Brown double-headers, further stories emerged concerning Safety and Security’s intervention in heckling activities at other Dartmouth sporting events. True to Dartmouth form, general outrage and disgruntlement ensued.

Student-athletes and student-hecklers alike have expressed strong opinions on the subject of restricted heckling. However, as baseball player Jeff Speights ’05 commented, the line that separates appropriate heckling from inappropriate heckling is “pretty gray,” and as a result, the opinions expressed on the subject are quite varied. I have contacted both athletes and hecklers in order to gain a better understanding of the general attitude held by those most directly affected by Safety and Security’s heckling crackdown. In the course of my surveying, I found that Speights’ casual observation holds considerable weight—even members of the same team disagree with one another on where to draw the line when it comes to heckling.

A majority of those surveyed responded that most forms of heckling are acceptable, but that limits to appropriateness should and do exist. Baseball player Andrew Nacario ’07 commented that “heckling should be kept clean; no cussing or personal attacks.” Another member of the baseball team, Patrick Pfeiffer ’06 explained that “heckling is inappropriate when it offends the fans that are at the sporting event.” Men’s hockey player Nick Johnson ’08 drew the line at “any gay, racial, or sexist jokes.” These limits seem reasonable enough; however, Dartmouth Rugby Football Club member Will Pierce ’06 reported that he “was personally threatened with being removed from the men's lacrosse game against Brown for telling a player he ‘sucks,’ because apparently,” according to the S&S officers, “that [was considered to be] profanity.” Another heckler, who requested to remain anonymous, further reported that at a recent lacrosse game, he and several friends “walked to the opposite side of the field so that no adults or young children would hear [their] heckling, and S&S was still intrusive in stopping [them] from even using the most basic heckling techniques.”

It is possible that the Safety and Security’s quick-to-condemn tactics result from an insightful sensitivity to generational differences. Much of today’s pop-culture lingo—the ubiquitous and essentially harmless verb “suck,” for example—is still considered obscene and offensive by the parental attendees of college sporting events. Still, this explanation does not account for the restrictions placed on the hecklers who reportedly relocated so that the adults and children in the crowd could not hear them. Largely due to these less understandable restrictive actions, several students have expressed concern that the administration, through Safety and Security, is limiting their first amendment right to freedom of expression.

Baseball player Stephen Perry ’07 commented that “the fact that the school is trying to squander free speech is utterly ridiculous. This is America—baseball and heckling are part of our American freedom—[and] to disrupt this is like punching George Washington in the face.” While slightly hyperbolic in expression, Perry is not alone in his views. Baseball player Will Bashelor ’07 similarly agrees that “it’s an issue of freedom of speech.”
Given that the constitutional limits to free speech are barely limiting at all, however, perhaps the administration has chosen to draw an arbitrary line so as completely to avoid any undisputedly tasteless situations. Then again, as women’s basketball player Elise Morrison ’07 commented, “[while] there is the issue of limits, I feel that the students know where [to draw the line] and that it is unnecessary for S&S to try to [impose] their limits on the student body.”

It seems then that the outrage at the S&S heckling restrictions results mostly from anger at the administration’s authoritarian presence in realms of student life that are more appropriately governed by the students themselves. Baseball player Chris Grimm ’05 noted that while he doesn’t “fault S&S at all” because “they are just doing their jobs,” he still believes “asking someone to stop being excited about a sporting event doesn’t [seem like] a job for Safety and Security.” Each athlete and heckler surveyed reported that, even without Safety and Security intervention, Dartmouth sporting events are not plagued with offensive heckling. In fact, most athletes believe that Dartmouth “hecklers have done an excellent job of keeping their material relatively clean and clever,” and that “they are very tasteful and use appropriate heckling.” Baseball player Paul Huelskamp ’06 complained that his “little league baseball teams [heckled] more than fans at Dartmouth [do] now,” and Nick Johnson and David Jones, both ’08 hockey players, noted that “our hecklers are a joke compared to places like Vermont and Cornell.”

So, what’s the verdict? Are members of Safety and Security “just doing their jobs,” or are they, as rugby player Doug Raicek ’08 claims, “as usual, crossing the line from helping people to needlessly being a huge pain in the ass”? I believe that the truth lies somewhere in between these two answers. Hopefully the administration will take notice of and take action to change the students’ growing discontent over the seemingly unnecessary S&S intervention in Dartmouth heckling practices.