<p>In my opinion, the song lyrics by themselves, if shared only within the group, wouldn’t meet either the obscenity standard, nor are they incitements to immediate crime. They are extremely objectionable, but if we expel people for just having them, next people will want to expel students for reading Lolita. The e-mails may be a different matter, since they may have been more direct incitement.</p>
<p>You don’t really support free speech unless and until you have to support speech you really, really don’t like.</p>
<p>The lyrics are disgusting. Coupled with the emails and the rapes themselves, what more do you really need for expulsion? I’m confused.</p>
<p>I support free speech. I don’t support hate speech, but I understand it exists. On the other hand, the last time I heard of a university willing to have a KKK group affiliated with it? Well, I haven’t. </p>
<p>The university is an institution, not a state. Expulsion or suspension is not prison. I don’t understand these arguments. I don’t think they need to go to jail for the lyrics. (If I had a son singing that song, he’d sure as hell get some therapy and sensitivity training.) But, yeah, we aren’t sending the men to prison for singing this stuff, but nobody needs to have them around either.</p>
<p>You say it is private speech, except it’s not. Here we are and we know.</p>
<p>So-called hate speech codes at universities have some serious First Amendment problems. Especially at State universities, which (via incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the states per the 14th Amendment) are considered the government. </p>
<p>Fighting words and incitement to violence can be regulated. Just like falsely shouting “FIRE” in a crowded theater can be regulated. But just saying terrible noxious disgusting hateful and outragous things without more, probably is legally untouchable. For that, sunlight is the best disinfectant. </p>
<p>Hate speech towards women is slow to vanish because when they wrote the hate speech law, they deliberately left women out. Equal rights, the same, because they deliberately left women out of the 14th amendment. </p>
<p>If you think this doesn’t matter, look at who is protected and who is not. </p>
<p>But hate speech is not all in good fun, and emails calling women rape bait are no different than emails calling ethnic groups by slurs and encouraging criminal behavior towards those groups. Jokes about rape coming from a fraternity are about as funny as jokes about lynchings at the local kkk group. </p>
<p>I want to be clear that I am talking about speech, and not speech coupled with actions. So, if necessary, imagine a fraternity that is found to be singing this song at its private meetings, with no e-mails or other bad actions as part of the case. In such a case, in my opinion anyway, a state university could not legally punish the group for that speech.</p>
<p>How did the lyrics in question come to light? That might make some difference.</p>
<p>Look. I grew up on the north shore of Chicago, not far from Skokie where the nazi marches took place. I grew up talking about this reality. </p>
<p>UIUC does not have a nazi group affiliated with it. I know of no school which affiliates with the kkk. If your group is singing violent songs about queers, you will be kicked off campus. In war zones, rape is systemically used against women the same way lynchings were used. Jokes about rape coming from a fraternity are as menacing as jokes about lynchings from skin heads. They just aren’t plausable as jokes anymore. Not given what we know. </p>
<p>Do the skin heads and kkk and nazis have a right to a parade. Absolutely. Do they have a right to affiliation with a state supported university? I doubt it. I mean, skin heads in the police will lose their jobs. Kkk in the FBI ? I don’t think so. </p>
It’s not that, exactly–it’s rather that certain activities are protected, and a government entity (which includes a state university) can’t punish you for doing them. And one of these is that you can’t be punished for the content of speech, absent some specific exceptions. For what it’s worth, I don’t think a state university could expel a student for joining the KKK or the Nazi Party, or for participating in a peaceful parade on behalf of one of those organizations. The government can’t punish you for exercising your right to free association.</p>
<p>Well, maybe. I think if a public university had a mechanism for a group becoming affiliated with the university, there would be constitutional limitations on how much it could review the views of the group. This has probably been tested (maybe not with the KKK, but perhaps with something like a communist group).</p>
<p>Wait? This is a genuine question @Hunt, because I don’t actually know. </p>
<p>Are you saying that if it comes to light that a state employee like the superintendent of a school is seen marching in a nazi parade, he or she cannot be fired? </p>
<p>The debate on the 18 year old drinking age is similar the same as the one on legalizing marijauana.</p>
<p>Booze and pot are universally and freely available to any teenager and 20-something on demand. And widely used by that demographic. So the only question is whether is pro/con ledger is better or worse by having the substance freely available on a legal basis or freely available on an illegal basis. How much use, abuse, drunk driving, incarceration, gang activity, cartel violence, etc. do you wind up with under various sets of regulations?</p>
<p>That can definitely be debated. For myself, the package I’d pick is an 18.5 year old drinking age for beer and wine, maybe 18.5 for liquor consumed in a licensed bar (where there would be sober bartenders and bouncers), 21 years old for liquor bought at a liquor store, 21 for recreational pot. All enforced by stiff penalites for non-compliance. A bottle of vodka or pot in a freshman dorm room is a treated as a major discipline/legal issue. Beer in a 17.5 year old’s freshman dorm room, not a big violation. </p>
<p>I don’t think firing someone requires the same standard of offense that expelling someone from school would. Technically, you can lay someone off or outright fire someone for insulting their boss. You can’t expel someone for insulting the president of the university. I think that goes for private and public universities.</p>
<p>Another issue is that free speech is not just an individual right, but is perhaps the most important attribute of a university. So it’s not just a question of legality. Free exchange of ideas is central to the growth of students which is supposed to be taking place at universities, and it’s under assault. I like the way Dennis Miller put it (roughly paraphrasing), “i think anyone should be allowed to say what they think, and that it should be a playground of ideas, and the bad ideas will have their butt kicked by all the good ideas.” </p>
<p>Even some of the more obvious objectionable things which could be weeded out aren’t so obvious in execution. For instance, both sides of the Muslim-Israeli conflict characterize the others as using “hate speech.” Look up the dialogue between David Horowitz and the Muslim-American student at UCSD, who openly admitted to supporting Hamas and even endorsed some of the worst statements made by the Muslim clerics. Would you advocate expelling her for that statement? In fact, Horowitz made the case that Muslim-American groups on campuses are wings of Hamas; should membership in them be grounds for expulsion? Even though I think her statements are objectionable in the worst way, I wouldn’t expel her. </p>
<p>It is much, much easier and more justified for the universities to discontinue an organization’s status as an official university group, although even this must be carefully considered.
In the case of fraternities, too often this question comes down to money: money from alumni and also money to build more dorms. </p>
<p>Since we’re talking about banning stereotypes, how about ending the misappropriation of Hellenic culture by so-called “Greek” organizations. The original Greeks founded philosophy and mathematics; they weren’t toga-wearing, beer-guzzling neanderthals.</p>
That’s correct. The government can’t punish a person for exercising constitutional rights. It can be pretty hard sometimes. For example, the Westboro Baptist Church tests the limits of my commitment to free speech all the time.</p>
<p>I may be in the minority, but to me the lyrics in question are further evidence that relations between young men and young women are deteriorating and may have reached an all-time low. I knew plenty of “bad boys” when I was in college, some of them in fraternities, but I never encountered anything like this. Instead of addressing this growing mistrust and miscommunication, I see too many adults who just want to add more fuel to the fire.</p>
<p>@Collegealum314 "Another issue is that free speech is not just an individual right, but is perhaps the most important attribute of a university. "</p>
<p>While this is important, to me, it is not as important as the right of all types of people to attend in a non-threatening environment. That has to be paramount to establishing an environment conducive to learning.</p>
<p>@Collegealum314 “Look up the dialogue between David Horowitz and the Muslim-American student at UCSD, who openly admitted to supporting Hamas and even endorsed some of the worst statements made by the Muslim clerics. Would you advocate expelling her for that statement? In fact, Horowitz made the case that Muslim-American groups on campuses are wings of Hamas; should membership in them be grounds for expulsion. Just about every group I’ve heard of has been compared to the Nazis.”</p>
<p>I think that the difference between campus misogyny and your example is that, at this point, we are not seeing dead and/or raped college students coming out of the Muslim/Israeli discussion on a regular basis. At least not in the USA.</p>
<p>It seems to me that until fraternities can demonstrate that they are willing to follow alcohol rules, and consistently behave in a respectful manner toward women, they should be accorded the same rights that the KKK would receive.
I have to agree with the earlier post that pointed out that if you substitute all of the references to raping women in these email and songs with references to lynching African Americans, then more people would take it seriously. </p>
<p>I’m not saying they are good lyrics, that they aren’t vile or misogynistic. I’m saying they are not “the fraternity’s” as attributed in the story. I am also not surprised someone of college age would have found old John Valby videos on YouTube and written down the lyrics, much in the same way my 16 year-old found a song with the f-word in it and watched it repeatedly. My fraternity had copies of “Mein Kampf” and “Dianetics” in the library but it was not proof that we were either Nazis or Scientologists. You can listen to acid rock without dropping acid.</p>
<p>I don’t particularly like the fraternities at my daughter’s college. They serve alcohol to underage girls, get them incapacitated and fraternity brothers rape them (to be clear, my D has never been to one). For this they should be punished. For the lyrics on their ipods, they should not be punished no matter how objectionable. If it were up to me, the guy who wrote the “rape bait” email would also be at least put on probation because there is a directly traceable author. The author of those lyrics is now 69 years old and cannot be kicked out of Georgia Tech.</p>
<p>@Magnetron. Even though I want to stomp my feet and tell you you are wrong. I think you elucidated that really well, and I think you are right. </p>
<p>I’m trying to imagine that. I’m trying to imagine a fraternity that sings songs about dismembering and raping women, but doesn’t have members who commit sexual assaults. And I can’t. That’s because rape is so common on college campuses. And where would the rapists-- the rapists that we know exist-- most likely be hanging out? Yep, in the fraternities that sing and joke about violence against women.</p>
<p>I can more easily imagine a fraternity that, we discover, is singing horrible songs about rape and dismemberment and dismemberment followed by rape, but that doesn’t have an accused rapist as a member. And maybe I’d let that frat go with an admonishment. But in my heart, I’d think that at least one of the brothers was a rapist and we hadn’t caught him yet. Yet. Rape is common.</p>
<p>I think it depends on any number of things. There are publicized cases that are beyond reprehensible, and some FB pages are difficult to reconcile with respect for others and self-respect, but I have also been heartened by the positive and healthy relations I have seen with my kids. My son is much more mindful than I was at his age (I eventually came around ). Even the hookups are above-board (recently, a girl asked for consent because my son was slightly intoxicated; I guarantee that never happened in my day ). </p>
<p>The jerks (of both sexes) are definitely out there, but I also think that the level of sexual responsibility and respect has been elevated in a significant portion of youth. Now, we have to make sure that the jerks are made aware that the other kids won’t stand for it, and that the parents won’t pay for it. </p>
). Even the hookups are above-board (recently, a girl asked for consent because my son was slightly intoxicated; I guarantee that never happened in my day