University of Michigan Spends $16K on Campaign to Warn Students to Watch What They Say

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of Michigan
41

I think we can all agree that this campaign has sparked an interesting discussion and debate, and one can only hope that it has provoked this type of response on campus, instead of ridicule. If this is the result, then $16k is not a lot of money and it was well spent. Free speech vs political correctness vs harmful speech is a worthwhile thing for college kids to ponder.

I still think the suggestions in the campaign are ridiculous - but maybe purposely so to spark exactly this type of discussion?

Maybe think of it like an effective political cartoon – it is ridiculous and exaggerated on its surface but scratch a little deeper and it’s intent is to send a powerful message.

42

Unless you work for the government. Is that really any different than calling a public U “the govt”.

43

If someone is offended when I use words like “crazy” and “insane,” I would honestly rather just not associate with them. I understand not using outright racial slurs, but that’s just silly.

I’m surprised “silly” isn’t on the list, too.

44

You still misunderstand about free speech. It doesn’t matter if you work for the government or a private company. It is an “at will” employment issue, not a speech issue. The First Amendment only means the government cannot pass laws that restrict speech or put you in jail for your choice of speech. Read it. It does not mean there are no consequences for telling lies about other people (you will soon have no friends, a consequence), or calling your boss names (you will be fired, a consequence) or standing on a cafeteria table in the middle of lunch hour and yelling that you think that the Taliban is right and that all Americans should be killed (you will be fired AND have no friends, a consequence). I don’t care who you work for, you are getting fired. But you are free to make that speech and you are not going to jail for it, as long as you don’t actually promote violence (see, there is an example of where there are limitations on speech).

But just like this site is privately owned and can decide what speech to allow to remain on the site while a government owned site would have far more restrictions, a private university can have more restrictions than a state of federal university. I guess the only federal universities are the military academies, and they have restrictions for other reasons that are allowed by the constitution.

45

iwannabebrown, you completely misunderstood my post.

My post was meant to say that I am tired of people’s overacting to certain words that could have been just brushed off and let it go. Like, “crazy”, “insane”, “I got raped by the test.” Last one sounds a bit more unpleasant than the other two, but then, we can’t always ask around women, “hey do you have any experience of being sexually assualted?” That’s just silly.

However, I do NOT tolerate when someone says something that are clearly malicious, like "gay’, “fag”, “gyps” etc etc. Anyone knows that they are not meant in nice ways.

46

As a parent who has watched my sons grow up insensitive to what a word can mean to others – I applaud this attempt to educate young people that words mean something outside their own bubble. My teens think that because an African American friend talks about someone being their “n’ah,” its ok for them to do that. Or that saying something is “ghetto” is a meaningful description. They often do not realize that their vocabulary means something different to them than it does to the broader world.

47

About the ghetto thing, I think you guys might not understand because you aren’t college aged or younger. I’m in high school and I hear people say “that’s so ghetto” a lot. I’m bad at explaining so you all can refer to these entries on urban dictionary to help you understand how kids these days use the word “ghetto.” http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ghetto

These days it’s more associated with poor black people than Jewish people.

48

Yeah…the word “ghetto” will be def. insulting/trauma inducing to our grandparent generations who are Jewish, but not to this CURRENT generation. In my high school, I had many Jewish friends and they always used the words ‘ghetto’ without any hesitance. And no, I don’t think it’s because they don’t know the meaning of the word. They do, and in fact, everyone with decent education knows. However, the meaning of the word inevitably changes after some time, and now it has become to mean something that is,as @dsi441 said, more associated with poor part of the society, which happens to be black people in general…I think

49

Why won’t you tolerate someone using gyped but you’ll tolerate someone comparing a felonious assault of someone’s body and autonomy to a difficult math test?

50

It’s a lot of money when there are families out there that could use the help paying for a college education these days! The bigger question should be what are parents teaching or failing to teach their children in todays society that college age students need a class to be taught what is inconsiderate, hateful or hurtful speech! SMH we are worried about the wrong things maybe if more parents started teaching right from wrong in the home at an early age ( hence learning how to use nice words in kindergarten) schools wouldn’t find it necessary to pick up the slack & re-educate young adults on the basics of common courtesy in the real world. Sometimes all we can do is shake our heads at how far behind we really are as a civilized nation.

51

“It’s a lot of money when there are families out there that could use the help paying for a college education these days!”

Not really IsItOverYetMom. $16,000 is peanuts to a university, especially one with 43,000 students and an operating budget of $7,000,000,000. If a university spent 100% of its resources on financial aid, it would not be much of a university would it? Michigan’s budget is compartmentalized, and the money spent on this particular initiative was not siphoned from the financial aid/merit scholarship funds.

That being said, I agree that a university should not have to educated adults about appropriate language. That should have been handled long before by parents, high schools and local communities.

52

@fallenchemist‌

A couple of points:

Most (all) laws limiting speech are imposed by states, so the Fourteenth Amendment applies.

You certainly can be jailed for using speech that your state has deemed unlawful. These statutes have been found in compliance under the Fourteenth Amendment (see Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire)

Basically, you can’t use “fighting words”, and what defines such words is a moving target.

53

But didn’t later court decisions say that “fighting words” cannot be defined by political content or viewpoint, but only by whether they incite violence?

But that is a separate issue from letting people know that some words might be perceived as insulting even though the speaker may not be aware of that.

54

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBPe0UcLjM8

Pretty funny video in the context of this thread

55

I feel like we may be missing an important point here. In my house my very wise DW had a highly effective system for teaching respect and appropriate use of language to our 5 kids and the hoards of their friends who were always here.

The earlobe pinch…often followed by a subtle “excuse me” seemed to get the point across.

As parents we need to take on this burden at home, higher education ought to have more important things to do.

In that spirit I suggest U of M hire my lovely wife who should have those 43,000 kids in line in a few weeks !

I can imagine hands all over campus rushing to cover at risk ears. Behavior changes when expectations are clear.

56

@Singersdad‌

I love that post!

For those the brought up state laws and “fighting words”, a couple of points. The NH decision by the US Supreme Court was made in 1942. Anyone that has studied the history of the First Amendment (FA) and the courts knows that the FA was much more narrowly construed until after WWII. The Warren Court especially put the country on the path that has us where we are today, a very expansive view of protected speech. I would be willing to bet a very hefty amount of money that the same case brought in front of today’s court would get an opposite finding. The NH law itself is mocked by most attorneys as being a “kitchen sink” law, but it appears to serve the useful purpose of giving law enforcement a lesser charge to bargain with in cases where there is bad behavior by people but they do not deserve a felony charge.

But the other thing about that law is that it is much closer to the “inciting violence” exception to the FA. Certainly the case cited involved that issue. So it really does not at all apply to the simple banning of words or phrases. I know, UM is not banning them, although I could trot out the “slippery slope” argument. But even if you are sure that they would never be officially banned, clearly the idea is to make them socially unacceptable and therefore achieve the same goal. The problem becomes the inevitable overreactions. People have talked about context being key, like for words such as “crazy” or “rape”. But these are legitimate words, and as sure as I am typing this in the future someone would use those words in a perfectly appropriate context and get slammed and shamed for it. Same for those that have pointed out the phrase “that’s so ghetto” is offensive. Fine, I can totally see that. But they didn’t choose to counsel the phrase as offensive, but the perfectly legitimate word ghetto in the entirety of its use.

Think it could never happen that people will be unfairly persecuted over words? Look up the case of the Washington DC staffer who used the word “niggardly” once. Now for those of you who don’t know, the word means

and the word niggard has zero relationship to the “n” word, but instead has the following origin

David Howard lost his job over this, although he was rehired. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/jan99/district27.htm/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/williams/williams020499.htm

The point being that history is rife with correctness gone amok when authority tries to limit speech and behavior this way. That wasn’t even a “banned” word, it just sounded like one although not an exact homophone (can I say homophone??). God forbid if he had used the word ghetto in a talk about blighted areas and plans for recovery.

My kids don’t even use four letter words like the F word or the S word, because they never heard their parents use them and were taught that intelligent people can express themselves and make their point without using language considered vulgar by society, even as society becomes more vulgar. I just hate to see perfectly legitimate language (IMO, obviously) put in that category because as a society we are so afraid of offending even a single person. It does seem odd, in a way, that we no longer enforce public decency laws such as those in New Hampshire when people use the F word and its relatives in public (and even around young children), but we are willing to excoriate people for using the word ghetto or gay or crazy. Crazy??? My goodness.

57

I think it depends on the use of crazy. I tried last night to find examples of inappropriate use of the word crazy like they have for “i want to die” or “that test raped me” and my guess is that they’re talking about using it in a derogatory fashion. Not “oh man, that roller coaster ride was insane” but more like “Janet texted me again last night, that chick is crazy” or “I can’t stand my roommate, she’s insane” both of which equate mental illness to negative behaviors many of which have nothing to do with mental illness.

You say that it’s listed as a word vs a phrase but look at “retarded.” It’s listed as a word but then in the sample poster it’s shown in the phrase “that’s retarded.”

Similarly, yes, I know that the use of ghetto now is much more associated with people of color than jews but honestly american ghettos formed in decades past aren’t too far off from jewish ghettos in terms of them being created by discrimination (e.g. banks discriminating by race about whom to loan money, prior lack of police presence etc). I doubt UM is trying to excoriate people for using ghetto in the context of areas that are actually ghettos in cities but to say that an iPhone or the way someone talks is ghetto is unnecessary. Thats why the campaign isn’t called “DON’T USE THESE WORDS” it’s called “words matter” with the tagline “think before you speak.” If crazy, insane, rape, ghetto, are actually the most appropriate word for what you’re saying then use it but >90% of the time people use these words there are more appropriate ways to say it. If you think about it and decide “in the context in which I’m saying this including who is hearing it - I think its appropriate” then go ahead. Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong, but the fact is most people don’t think about it and that’s what the campaign is actually about.

58

Your example is actually the opposite – a word that superficially sounds like an ethnic insult but is actually of unrelated origin. Compare to those words referring to dishonest business practices which are based on ethnic insults.

In any case, simply advising people that use of such words may be unintentionally insulting or offensive to some people (much as you advise your kids not to use certain words to refer to sexual intercourse or human waste) is a far cry from outlawing them.

59

Freedom of speech applies only to the government making speech illegal, and it applies to the states as well, since freedom of speech is a constitutional issue. If a state tried to put penalties on the N word, for example, they would be in violation of the constitution, since the constitution applies to the states (if it didn’t, then old Roy Moore in Alabama wouldn’t be in such hot water:).

Fighting words as far as I understand it were not regulating speech, what it said was that distasteful speech could be used as a defense if, for example, someone called someone’s mother a lowlife, and the other person punched them in the nose, it didn’t make the speech illegal, it said that distasteful speech could be used as a defense for an activity that was criminal, like assault…and it isn’t really a first amendment issue, what it is is the state regulating the consequences of speech.

The other place the government can regulate speech is if the outcome of the speech is found to be detrimental to society (and yes, it can be abused…). Feminists tried to get pornography outlawed, though porn is generally covered by the first amendment, making the argument it ‘harmed women’, that it caused rape, etc, and places in this country tried to pass laws on that based on that argument. It failed in the Supreme Court,not only because it is very hard to define porn (those pressing for the laws put, for example, Playboy magazine on the same level as hard core XXX porn magazines, and also could be used against erotica, the religious right types who were supporting this with the feminists would have made a book like 50 Shades of Gray illegal) but also because the court could find no pressing societal need to do so, the evidence the supporters put in front of the court was mostly supposition and studies of dubious value, and they argued that as distasteful as porn might be, and yes, a negative influence it might be, the burden on restricting a right is very, very high. On the other hand, yelling 'Fire" in a movie theater, or getting in front of a crowd and inciting them via hateful speech to go after a person or a group of people, especially if that group of people then acts on it, will get you put in jail and convicted if they can show that the speech led to the incident.

As far as the private vs public employers free speech gets tricky. A private employer can fire an employee for speech, political or otherwise, that they don’t like. With a government body, like a university, that doesn’t apply, especially to political speech. Because the employer is the government, a new layer is added, because firing or other sanctions on speech would then be covered by the first amendment , and courts have ruled that public employees have rights that private employees do not. In a public setting, they can restrict speech, but it has to be on the basis of showing that there is a broader reason to do so; for example, an employee who openly uses racial epithets or said derogatory things about gay students could be reprimanded or fired (despite what Fox news and the right wing would say about free speech), because speech that interferes with the effectiveness of their job position is not protected, nor should it be, the same way Roy Moore can’t put the 10 commandments or a cross in his courtroom, his first amendment rights are outweighed by his role as a judge in being a fair arbiter, not telling people in front of his court that he is judging based on his faith (doesn’t matter whether he actually does or not, judges and other public officials are supposed to work for all the people, and are supposed to maintain a neutral image to those they serve).

I don’t know if the program will actually work or not, I have no problem with a public service campaign to promote a respectful campus, I would just wish that they ran the campaign by a diverse group of people instead of as likely happened, a couple of people dreampt this up and in the process IMO went a little over the top with some of what they claim is objectionable, much like my story about black ice and master/slave as an engineering term (I told both of these to a friend of mine who works where I do, who happens to be African American, and he thought both of those were the funniest things he had ever heard, he basically shook with laughter and said something to the effect that the people promoting those should get out in the world and actually see how racism works…).

60

Well, I don’t agree that it is a far cry from outlawing them, but it is not the same, that is true. My point is that we are heading down a road of public shaming for use of ordinary words, and my contention is that in a short time context won’t matter. My example is not the opposite, because what it shows is that people get upset over things they know nothing about and can cause real damage. That makes it pretty obvious they will get upset, perhaps even more easily, over the use of a word like crazy or ghetto even if used in an “appropriate” context. For you to be correct that this won’t happen depends on the general public being logical and reasonable. That has not been my experience in these kinds of situations. I just think we are going too far in trying to control people’s use of language in order to appease every single person that might be offended. What is true for the n word does not need to be true for words like crazy, because there is no context in which a white person can use the n word and not be offensive.

You don’t believe this is a step towards the “language police”. I hope you are right. But I don’t believe you are.

Oh, and by the way I was not comparing the word niggardly to words like gypped or Jewed. I have no argument, zero, that these words are entirely inappropriate. I certainly am not saying that there should be no social conventions as to words that are hateful and disgusting to use. I am saying that it goes too far when it includes words like crazy and ghetto and rape. Look, many words can be put into a context that is hurtful to others. That list could be extremely long. I don’t disagree that educating people to be nicer to others, including through choice of words and phrases, is fine. And maybe that is what UM does intend here. It probably is. But I don’t think that is what the end result will be when they go about it this way. People will end up focusing on the words themselves, regardless of context. We see this kind of thing all the time.