Bugging or spying on a person is not the same as sharing e-mails that were sent to you. The kid who leaked them obviously thought that the situation actually required public scrutiny, else he wouldn’t have done it. And in case you or @Pizzagirl missed it in my posts, here it is again: I don’t think the university should punish them. I said I think their fellow frat brothers who are “concerned” about the language used and views held by their fellows in the house should spread the word. This wasn’t a conversation someone eavesdropped on; this was a series of e-mails written out by the frat members and then sent out to other members and alumni. They willingly advertised their views to people on and off campus. They even argued with a black guy over their right to use the N word. So they shouldn’t be too upset if their opinions were aired. It’s not like the dude leaked private family pictures or e-mails that had nothing to do with a campus-wide problem.
FWIW: None of the students in that article on the Maroon even suggested the university do something to the kids. Instead they suggested UChicago should address school wide racism.
But @InfinityMan you seem to have a real hard time with the concept that if you choose to be offended you aren’t entitled to redress. Free speech means that you need to tolerate speech which may offend you; particularly when the speech wasn’t intended to be shared publicly.
Being suspended from campus activities can have more than one meaning, and perhaps that is why some of us are disagreeing. On some campuses, Being suspended from campus activities means that no fraternity functions other than meals and active meetings may take place at the fraternity house. It’s a violation for a group of guys to so much as drop by after the bars close and drink a few beers.
On other campuses, being suspended merely means that they can’t participate in Greek Week and such as that. They can still have parties and events at their house. And at some campuses it’s somewhere in between.
Show me one post where I said what those boys did was illegal, or where I said the University or police or whatever would be in the right to prosecute them. It is either you selectively read my posts or you didn’t read them at all.
You also seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what free speech is. Like @fallenchemist said up thread, free speech has its limits. You can cuss your boss all you want. You won’t go to jail, but you * will * get fired if your boss chooses to let you go.
And no, I don’t have have to tolerate anything I don’t like. I may not be able to pursue legal action (and I wouldn’t want to, in any case), but I absolutely have the right to “not tolerate” speech that offends me.
All you can do, however, is just not hang out with those guys - which you weren’t doing anyway, so problem solved.
Your analogy to a boss firing someone doesn’t work, since your boss has employment power over you. You don’t have any power over the AEPi students (assuming you were a fellow student), other than social disapproval.
“Show me one post where I say the frat kids are not free to have unpopular thoughts and opinions. I said the First Amendment doesn’t give one the right to be a jerk. A poster took it from a legal point and said that yes, it technically does. Let me clarify: you do not get to claim moral high ground when you’re racist. Call black people the N word, call a barren lot Palestine (it is your right after all), but don’t be surprised when people voice their disgust with you.”
You’re still wrong. The First Amendment DOES give someone the right to be a jerk. Stated more succinctly, it gives them the right to hold unpopular opinions, and to communicate unpopular opinions. (Hey, I wish no one were in favor of Donald Trump, but it’s a free country and people are allowed to voice their support of him.)
And of course people can choose to reject you, not socialize / associate with you because of your views. Duh.
I think you’re a little confused about the difference between private and public communications, though.
I think you’re also a little confused about the distinction between attitudes / opinions / speech and behavior.
InfinityMan, per your post #90 - I love how it’s “they,” as though they are all one undifferentiated mass of people with one common brain. Wasn’t one of the emails explicitly “hey guys, let’s shut this down - we don’t need to talk like this?” There weren’t a flurry of emails back after that saying “no way, we want to talk this way and that’s that.”
I never said that* I * am going to do anything. I suggested their fellow peers do something. The conversations are no longer private- spreading them further would be a kind of ‘social disapproval’. And the example I gave was to illustrate that free speech does have limits (like I already mentioned in my post), it clearly does not apply to the situation at hand, and I never said it did.
Go read my post in response to Hunt again.
I’m not. Please do share what gave you that impression.
I used the pronoun to reference the racist frat brothers, not the whole frat. I went and reread my post and it’s not hard to figure out who I mean by “they”.