<p>As a current Tufts student, I must first say I love my school. It's the best experience of my life. However, it should be known that Tufts is pretty homogeneous when it comes to political beliefs. When it comes to protecting individual freedoms and rights, Tufts is also not very strong. Take a look at what FIRE has to say about them: </p>
<p>FIRE</a> -</p>
<p>I can't say that I agree with either FIRE or your concerns. This is not a First Amendment issue, because we are talking about regulating speech at a private university. This is about the school's understandable desire to maintain an environment in which certain ethnic minorities are not made to feel that they are the object of scorn or enmity merely because of their ethnicity. I think that this is an entirely appropriate objective for such a university.</p>
<p>Homogeneous in what way? When I took a tour over the summer, the guide expressed that the campus was fairly liberal...</p>
<p>Homogeneous means not much variety.</p>
<p>Freedom of speech is a great idea but if people are running around saying damn black people, or death to gays, someones going to call them out.</p>
<p>FIRE was understandably angry to see something written by Tufts students and I totally agree.</p>
<p>A group wrote a "Christmas Song" called Come All Ye Black Folk and it basically said that Tufts needs to fill a quota of black, ghetto people, even if they're loud and stupid. That's seriously offensive. I would be ashamed if one of my classmates distributed garbage like that.</p>
<p>The issue was not that the Primary Source had criticized Affirmative Action, it was that they had attacked a specific group of students on campus because of their race.</p>
<p>I grabbed the following from similar discussion elsewhere; these are the thoughts of Matt Skibinski, the Editor-in-Chief of the Tufts Daily from last semester. There's been a lot of movement in this story; thefire.org, unfortunately, has failed to stay current on the events they describe which has led to an understandable level of confusion and misinformation. Hopefully, this will help add perspective.</p>
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I thought I'd comment on this since I'm the former editor of the student newspaper here, the Tufts Daily (Tufts</a> Daily). During my time on the paper, we covered (and were involved in) speech issues at Tufts quite a bit.</p>
<p>First, a factual correction: the university didn't actually force the Primary Source to byline every article. That was the initial decision by a committee of faculty members, but it was overturned shortly thereafter by a dean. The Source saw no consequences for what it published, other than a loss of respect from most students and strong condemnation from the administration.</p>
<p>Since then, the university has put together a "task force" on freedom of expression to craft suggested policy guidelines for a university-wide policy on campus speech. That body hasn't made any decisions yet, but it has released drafts of its declaration. (Here's the draft: Tufts</a> Daily - Task force drafts declaration on campus speech and here's an interview with the head of the task force about speech on campus: Tufts</a> Daily).</p>
<p>My take? I think Tufts is committed to free speech on campus, and I think that President Bacow is in particular. In the Daily, we published quite a few controversial articles (and one, even, that some people would consider offensive), and nobody ever tried to stop us or punish us. Bacow's view is that the solution to offensive speech is more speech -- not censorship.</p>
<p>That said, I'm not thrilled with the task force's policy draft; it seems to obscure Tufts' stance on the issue rather than clarify it. But even if it is approved, I don't think it will really have any effect on students either way -- it would be a guideline, rather than a concrete rule, and it's so vague and conflicting that it couldn't be used to restrict student speech anyway. In the end, it's up to the people in charge here how they deal with campus speech. The first amendment gives them a lot of wiggle room since Tufts is a private school, but the current administrators seem committed to an open speech policy anyway. Rest assured that your voice won't be censored during your time at Tufts.
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<p>The original post is located here: Fire.com</a> Discussion </p>
<p>Considering that nothing has been done to censor, impinge, or restrict the voice of the publication in question, much of thefire.org's positions seem hyperbolic to me. What I invite each of you to do, especially if you have freedom of expression concerns, is to use thefire.org's own profile of Tufts. This profile systematically lists the policies Tufts has concerning speech. Read the policies, and see if you have problems. FIRE</a> - Tufts University.</p>
<p>Appears that students that are Christians may not be openly welcomed at Tufts. Are Christian clubs popular at Tufts?</p>
<p>hebrewhammer, I am aware of the meaning of the word "homogeneous." What I was confused about is banaphone's claim that the political beliefs of the campus are homogenous, followed by a claim of tufts students' disregard for individual liberties, an action that would most likely be true of the modern political right (PATRIOT act, etc.). Not trying to start a political battle here, but the insinuation was curious. Perhaps I was distracted on my visit and tufts is more conservative than I imagined? Or maybe I'm making false inferences. </p>
<p>Aside from that, this is an interesting topic. Keep us posted on any updates, Dan.</p>