The Enemy Down The Street

It's signally depressing to read Speechcodes.org, a site that digest speech codes on our nation's campuses.

MacAlester College is the lead story today. Their harassment policy says:

MacAlester's "freedom of expression does not include the right to intentionally and maliciously aggravate, intimidate, ridicule or humiliate another person." It also defines harassment as "speech acts which are intended to insult or stigmatize an individual or group of individuals on the basis of their race or color, or speech that makes use of inappropriate words or non-verbals" and states that the "use of any offensive or demeaning terms which have sexual connotations including those contained in jokes and humor" may constitute sexual harassment. The college also asserts that it is a "gross misdemeanor" to "intentionally harass a person by engaging in certain acts which cause the person to feel oppressed, persecuted or intimidated." Thus, the college sacrifices students' rights of free speech by prohibiting a broad category of expression, seemingly in order to protect some students' feelings. No one who tells students that they are too weak to live with freedom is their friend.

Speechcodes calls Mac a "Red Light" school, based on this sort of thing.

How do the other area schools stack up?

The U of M also rates a red light, while Carleton College rates a yellow.

I'll have to ask fellow Northern Alliance muj King from SCSU Scholars how he thinks MNSCU stacks up. Reading the blog, I'd suspect "not well".