<p>^^hunt: I believe many of us would agree with you, but speech is under significant control by colleges, and is hardly ‘free’.</p>
<p>I believe that nobody should be legally punished for speech. I do not, however, believe that hate speech is free from consequences to the hater. You do no service to these students if they are allowed to remain a part of the community while singing songs celebrating the raping of dead women, also, necrophelia, and other really sick stuff. In no place in life will they not be fired for this kind of thing, ostracized, and generally considered to be troubled and relatively sick. You will not get the job, the date, the invitation, the marriage, the benefit of the doubt, if you choose to associate with these groups. And, a college campus like GaTech, if it wants to attract qualified women, might want to get rid of these idiots, which, as a selective school, they can very easily do.</p>
<p>@Hunt, I thought about the free speech angle, and how universities should respect that right if it is to be respected anywhere. And I somewhat agree. Have whatever lyrics you choose; there should be nobody there to hear them.</p>
<p>I wonder how many kids would attend those parties if it were known that they would be raided at least once, and that their transgressions would be public record, capable of being Googled by future employers.</p>
<p>I agree that they are idiots, and that they should be socially ostracized. However, I have to draw the line at official punishment for speech that they exchange in private, among themselves. If that kind of speech isn’t free, then no speech is free.</p>
<p>The only punishment for their free speech should be that nobody will listen to them any more or attend their parties. </p>
<p>The speech is relevant in creating an environment that led to an actual act (rape). They should be sanctioned for the rape, not the speech. However, the speech is also relevant to providing insight into the community that individuals (e.g., other students and parents who are supporting them) can use to decide that no, we don’t want to be part of a community that participates in that sort of speech/behavior/etc… People can and should pass judgment on such behavior with their feet.</p>
<p>I agree that there should be no punishment for speech.</p>
<p>However, if you say you want to “kill someone” and they end up dead in a couple of days, from murder, they will use that as evidence of guilt and motivation in court. They can sing whatever songs they want, but when the girl says I was drugged and raped at this fraternity house and these are their songs? Ummmmmm. Yeah.,</p>
<p>I disagree about speech at college. A college has the right and (IMO) responsibility to ensure a safe and civil atmosphere for all students. They can pick and choose which college-supported institutions support their values. I’d venture a guess that songs about different ways to murder and rape women, and instructions about how to get young women drunk so you can rape them, do not support the institutional values of any college.</p>
<p>Would a college permit a fraternity to sing supposedly humorous songs about how to lynch a black man, and the different ways of killing him? Would it be hilarious to change the Elvis song “Wear My Ring Around Your Neck” to “Tie a Rope Around His Neck?” Should a fraternity that sent around those lyrics to its members and sang that song at its Christmas party be allowed to remain on campus? </p>
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Yes, as long as the speech wasn’t directed to anybody but the group itself. Either there is free speech (which means no punishment for the content of speech) or there isn’t. Indeed, I think it would be unconstitutional for a state university to punish a fraternity for any speech entirely among its members, no matter what the content was.</p>
<p>And it’s a slippery slope. Should a campus group be allowed to circulate among its members written material and speeches stating that people who don’t share that group’s religious views are sinners and are condemned to eternal torment?</p>
<p>So you think that a Klan chapter should be chartered at Georgia Tech, so long as they don’t say they’re a Klan chapter in their Constitution? They call themselves the Fraternal Brotherhood of the Tree, but actually what they do is sit around and talk about ways to lynch black people to each other, that should be legal? Even though their pro-lynching emails and song lyrics become public, and even though some members of the Fraternal Brotherhood of the Tree have actually lynched people? They say it’s just a joke, but somehow some of their members get drunk and lynch other students-- this is all OK?</p>
<p>On edit: And let’s say that the Fraternal Order of the Tree also does some good around campus. They plant trees, and they have parties where usually nobody gets lynched.</p>
<p>Well, you’re mixing up speech and actions. Would you expel people who sit around thinking about lynching black people, if you could prove that’s what they were thinking about?</p>
<p>Let me expand on this: there are very few situations in which entirely private speech would not be protected by the First Amendment. I don’t think these songs would fit into any of the recognized exceptions. (The closest might be obscenity, but I don’t think that would apply, either). This would limit the authority of a public university in a situation like this. A private university could have more stringent rules–indeed, many colleges prohibit otherwise legal actions. My opinion is that private colleges should also respect free speech as a matter of modeling good civics, but it’s up to them to decide what to do about that.</p>
<p>One more thing: a lot of people seem to think that “hate speech” isn’t constitutionally protected. It is, unless it fits into one of the other exceptions, like immediate incitement to illegal actions.</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t have admitted them in the first place. But let’s say they’re there, I wouldn’t expel them. But I wouldn’t charter a group of them to get together and talk about lynching, even if they didn’t (usually) actually lynch people.</p>
<p>Georgia Tech’s code of conduct prohibits some constitutionally permitted actions. It prohibits “Boisterousness, rowdiness, obscene, or indecent conduct or appearance.” It’s legal to be boisterous and rowdy, yet that’s a conduct violation. It’s legal to plagiarize a paper, too, yet that’s prohibited at Georgia Tech. Therefore we see that Georgia Tech has the ability to prohibit constitutionally allowable actions.</p>
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<p>Actually it is not. (Authors have copyright protection.)</p>
<p>It’s legal to plagiarize a paper from non-copyrighted sources, however. </p>
<p>Just because something is currently legal doesn’t mean that it is constitutionally protected. But my main point is that it is dangerous to start punishing speech because we don’t like its content.</p>
<p>Even if legal action can’t be taken against free speech, can’t private bodies (universities, national fraternities) take action against speech they find offensive? They are not the law.</p>
<p>And of course parents are free to stop paying for their kids to participate in fraternities whose members’ speech they find objectionable. And pledges can take note and decide if they want to be “brothers” with these speaker, writers and singers. </p>
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<p>I beg your pardon? This is so over the top that it is difficult to know how to respond. Should I ask my S, a former D frat member, how successful he was at raping drunken girls? I know he didn’t succeed in killing anyone, since D apparently has been lucky enough to avoid an alcohol-related death since a student drowned in 1991.</p>
<p>Clearly, you are not informed about the social scene at Dartmouth,. The majority of eligible students, as ucbalumnus pointed out above, are members of fraternities, sororities, or one of the coed organizations. Many students pledge at D who would never do so at schools with a more exclusive, stereotypical Greek system. So it is quite reasonable to say that they may be a “silent majority” in the on-campus discussion so far, which has been dominated by a sometimes-strident minority. (Bear in mind that I say this as someone who favors dismantling the Greek system.) Secondly, the fraternities–not the sororities, which cannot serve alcohol, according to national rules–currently subsidize the social scene of the entire campus. Parties and gatherings at fraternities are open to anyone with a Dartmouth student ID. The fraternities buy and serve alcohol–most;y beer-- at no charge to non-members, male and female. The college has done an inadequate job of providing alternate social spaces for students, but allowed the fraternities to bear the entire burden. It is not, IMHO, unreasonable for the houses to ask the college to help support them in their efforts to provide a safer environment for students. </p>
<p>I gather that you either skipped or wrote off as lies everything they said about underage students, especially first years, drinking–mostly hard alcohol–in the dorms. (This is one of the reasons they need bouncers: keeping the drunken 18 yr olds out.) I gather that you also wrote off everything they said about sober monitors, bystander training, monthly alcohol-free parties, encouraging the houses to be less focused on alcohol-fueled parties, and so forth. </p>
<p>I would much rather see a proposal like this one, which addresses the reality that college students everywhere are, by and large, going to drink, than some zero-tolerance fantasy that accomplishes precisely nothing.</p>
<p>I understand that we should be wary about punishing speech. But a university shouldn’t be so wary of punishing speech that it charters an organization that sits around joking about murdering and raping women, and sends around memos explaining how to get women drunk and rape them, which the organization calls jokes but some of its members follow the suggestions and rape women. Evidently some guys don’t get that it’s a joke.</p>
<p>Requiring all first semester freshman to take alcohol education classes focusing on how much you drink, whether you eat, and whether you take medications or drugs, affects you getting drunk vs. dying from drinking might help.</p>
<p>'Course, if they <em>really</em> wanted to stop underage drinking, they’d put codes on all bottles of alcohol that can trace which stores are selling to minors, or to adults who provide alcohol to minors.</p>
<p>They freaking make me buy Sudafed from behind the pharmacy counter, having to give my photo ID, because they are worried I might make meth with it. Can’t they put some tracking on something that is hurting and killing far more people than meth?</p>
<p>There’s nothing stopping you from buying Sudafed for someone else, is there?</p>