<p>How bad is the free-speech issue on campus? Is it felt in daily life, and is it something that could get you in trouble if, for instance, you happened to write from an unpopular viewpoint in a paper for class?</p>
<p>Why I'm asking:</p>
<p>If your main sources are The Dartmouth Review--ideologically conservative, unaffiliated with the school, always critical of the administration; and speechcodes.org, a rating scheme developed by FIRE, another ideologically conservative organization (they don't seem to mind if a school bans, say, Michael Moore), you need to take what they say with not just a grain of salt but a whole salt mine.</p>
<p>For a somewhat less biased view, see this editorial from The Dartmouth, the student newspaper. It's about the trustee election but puts issues like alleged "speech codes" in perspective:
<a href="http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=20050520021%5B/url%5D">http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=20050520021</a></p>
<p>Good luck, wherever you end up. And work on those critical reading skills!</p>
<p>ExAG</p>
<p>hahaha, how about you work on your critical reading skills? a simple search on this site and you would've learned that salsera's heading to dartmouth... but no one really looks up little things like that, right? so it's not fair for you to expect her to know dartmouth review's affiliation when she's not even there yet, and not everyone knows about FIRE. she asked these questions so someone could provide good information, not so they can pick on the fact that she didn't waste her time checking up on different organizations' backgrounds when someone familiar with those bodies could tell her in a second. besides, apparently dartmouth thinks her critical reading skills are just fine. if i sound harsh, it's only b/c your comment was just really random and frankly offensive.</p>
<p>Sigh...</p>
<p>ExAG, it looks like you could do a bit more research. FIRE is hardly ideologically conservative; it garners support from both sides of the aisle--Nadine Strossen is one of its biggest supporters. </p>
<p>Further, search their case archives. You'll find them protecting the rights of student NAACP chapters, protecting teach-ins critical of Bush's foreign policy, protecting professors reprimanded for anti-military speech, and protecting radical pro-Palestinian students and professors. Sounds like a very conservative organization to me...</p>
<p>And I wouldn't trust what the Daily D has to say either; I'd be more likely to trust what's in the Review. At least they get their facts right.</p>
<p>In my own defense...</p>
<p>Did I provide any "analysis" of the two articles to which I provided links? No. This does not reflect on my "critical reading skills" -- I presented these articles as sources of information, knowing full well the political affiliation of each. But thank you for your offensive comments and "defense" of my abilities. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>What I really wanted here were personal opinions, and I believe I have gotten a few of them from you -- rather impassioned and quite off-topic, but at least it was a stimulating read.</p>
<p>Thanks again.</p>
<p>exadmissionguy et al,</p>
<p>I have no informed knowledge of the debate over speech at Dartmouth, free or otherwise, but it seems to me that the The Dartmouth article says no more on the issue of speech than that the current student body (monolithically?) proclaims that we want to shape the College in our own way. </p>
<p>Whatever that way happens to be--even when spoken in the royal we--is left to the wandering imagination of the dull-normals implied and contained in the over-reaching and imperial we The Dartmouth assumes it has spoken for. </p>
<p>One might imagine that even the writers of the Dartmouth Review and the fraternity in question would fall under the informed opinion and authority of The Dartmouths royal dominion and monarchical decrees on the behalf of the unpublished student body implied and contained in the cavalier we referred to. </p>
<p>However, simply saying it will not make it so; Oui!</p>