University of Oklahoma Fraternity suspended

Parents Forum
581

Now you’re Judge Hunt. You have two cases before you. The first one is a group of SAE students at a public university singing the lynching song in the quad, in a place where everyone agrees that they could sing an innocuous song. The university sanctioned them for “creating a hostile environment.” They sued. Do you side with SAE?

The second one is the DKE case. DKE pledges at a public university marched in front of women’s dorms, chanting “No means Yes, Yes means anal,” in a place and time where innocuous marching and chanting would be permitted. The university sanctioned them for “creating hostile environment.” They sued. Do you side with DKE?

ETA: No, let me change this. @Hunt, you’re running the disciplinary system for University of Hunt. SAE and DKE come before you with the charges above. Do you say that SAE and DKE have the free speech right to sing lynching songs and chant rape chants, and they go unpunished?

582

@zekesima ““I’m getting pretty tired of this kind of comment” You mean you’re getting tired of me presenting an AA’s perspective on this whole SAE thing? I’m sorry, is CC reserved for whites only?”

I know you are upset, and I see that you read the “You don’t have to live in America” comment as directed at black people, but the fact is that it wasn’t.

@hunt does not mean that at all. Many people would mean that, but he does not. He is simply defending free speech that is guaranteed in the constitution and suggesting that people who do not want to accept that have the option to either leave or to work to amend the constitution. It is not intended as a comment targeting black people in any way. It is good to have a diverse group with opinions on this board.

583

I don’t want this to sound facetious, but in determining where you want to send your kid to school, you should be aware that at public schools, the ability of the administration to punish speech is seriously limited. This is less the case at private schools, as has been noted before. I suppose this is a tradeoff some people might want to consider when choosing schools. Personally, I think the attitude of the general student body to this kind of speech and behavior is much more important than whether the administration expels somebody or not, and that attitude may well differ significantly between schools. Thus, for example, I personally would think it an important distinction if one college had a lot of all-white fraternities, while another one had mostly diverse fraternities. The fraternities might still be horrible at the second school, but not in the same way.

584

@Hunt‌ I am at school lol. but i did get the message.

585

@Much2learn I didn’t have to get past page 13 or so, but posts # 143, 148, 173, 197, 477 are a start

586

For me their comments wouldn’t make me feel unsafe on the OU (or is it UO) campus unless they have a history of racist behavior on campus, but they’d definitely make me feel unwelcome. “Unwelcomeness” is hard to quantify though.

587

Songs like that are being sung every day on every campus across the country. Several rap songs have lyrics that glorify rape and I’ve heard them sung by countless college kids. They seem to think they are just words and that people know they aren’t serious when they sing them.

588

It was directed at me, for thinking that my AA classmates shouldn’t be in fear. A distinction without a difference, I’m afraid. If you’re saying that I don’t have to live in America because I don’t want my AA classmates to be in fear, then you presumably must also believe that the AA classmates should go to college in another country if they don’t want to live in fear.

589

Here is the San Jose State case:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/21/justice/san-jose-state-racial-bullying/

590

What I meant is that if you don’t like the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech, you can take it up with James Madison.

And I repeat my question: what is the fear that would be created by finding out that an all-white frat at OU is engaging in this chant on its bus? And who would get to judge whether that fear was serious or reasonable enough to justify curbing speech? This is what I mean when I talk about slippery slope.

By the way, if the case was about some Black Panthers who were expelled for similar speech, I’d be saying the exact same thing. But I can guarantee you that the cast of characters would shift in terms of comments on media sites.

591

@hunt “So at your university, Cardinal Fang, what will you say when the atheist student association comes to you and complains that a Baptist student group marched through campus singing hymns saying that Jesus is the only way to heaven, creating a hostile atmosphere for non-believers? I assume you will expel the Baptists?”

To me, this example is clearly free speech. I begin to think that the “hostile environment” issue comes in when there are threats of violence in this life, not the next one. They can threaten hell and damnation in the next life all day long. They can use the N word too.

What I am not sure how to approach is the threats of illegal and harmful behavior. I understand that we have free speech, but there are other places currently where threats are not allowed, such as when a defendant speaks to a judge in a courtroom. If the defendant chants at a trial about ways to kill judges and juries, but does not mention a specific judge or jury, would that be legal and not punishable? I would think it creates a potentially hostile environment and should not be allowed.

If that is the case, then how can the same judge say it is not a “hostile environment” when the same thing is said to students on campus?

If you tell me that you are sticking to the all free speech that does not target a specific person is okay, I am going to be impressed at your consistency but surprised at the implications. I do not believe that any of Supreme court justices would allow this to go on their courtroom and say it is perfectly legal.

How do I have this wrong?

592

It appears they had good reason not to be comfortable openly expressing such sentiments. They thought they were expressing them privately among those who would not object. The good news is that almost everyone who has heard about the incident thinks the "brotherhood of the traveling chants’ (per Jon Stewart) are a bunch of racist jerks. I wish more people would get caught saying things and have to face the resulting backlash. Not that that the backlash should include violations of their constitutional rights.

593

A Message To The World From An Anonymous Fraternity Member At The University Of Oklahoma

http://totalfratmove.com/a-message-to-the-world-from-a-fraternity-member-at-the-university-of-oklahoma/

Disclaimer: 95% of the time TFM doesn’t accurately represent greek life. This time is does.

594

Individual cases can be tough. I think I would say that a defendant in front of an actual jury could reasonably be interpreted to be threatening that specific jury if he talked about killing jurors in general. I think I mentioned upthread that I might treat a chant differently if it were on the main quad vs. in front of the Afro-Am House.

So there are going to be cases in which it will be debatable whether there was a threat or not. If you had to adjudicate such cases, though, you are certainly going to have to consider whether a reasonable person would have considered the speech to be a threat or not–it can’t be enough for somebody to simply say that he or she perceived it as a threat.

I think it may help in thinking this over to put it this way–what speech would you punish if it were contained in a letter to the editor published in the student newspaper? You would punish a threat aimed at a specific person, certainly. But what if, for example, the letter said that the writer didn’t believe black people should ever be admitted to SAE, and then quoted the chant? That’s a lot harder, especially if we eliminate the image of scary groups of people marching through the campus.

To expand on this, which of the following is a threat?
a. I wouldn’t shed any tears if somebody burned down the SAE house with all those guys inside.
b. Somebody should burn down the SAE house with all those guys inside.
c. Let’s go over to the SAE house and burn it down with all those guys inside.

And add the following variables:
a. The statement is said by one roommate to another while sitting in their dorm room.
b. The statement is said by a speaker in front of a large group of people protesting SAE.

595

Form the article TransferGopher linked:

Anyone have more info about this? Are they sure it was related to the SAE incident?

596

Transfer Gopher: If Boren were to be consistent in preventing a hostile environment he would be expelling en masse, the protesters who are harassing those wearing Greek letters. This is the slippery slope that the First Amendment seeks to avoid. Campus would be a very quiet place full of mutes without the 1A.

597

I’m not commenting on anything. Just providing information. However, ALL people who break the rules should be punished.

598

The JS v. Bethlehem case, 807 A.2d 803 (Pa. 2002) was cited by @florida26 to support the claim that OU acted legally. The case doesn’t really apply to the OU for a variety of reasons. However, it illustrates that how someone feels does not determine whether something meets the legal definition of threat.

JS was a 13 year old who created a website which attacked the principal and some teachers, especially his math teacher. It said some truly horrific things about the teacher. It included a drawing of the teacher decapitated. It listed a number of “reasons” she should die. It asked other students to donate $20 so he could hire a hit man. However, it did NOT include any mechanism by which anyone could donate any money and the owner of the site was anonymous. However, it was evident that the creator of the site was a student in the school who was in an algebra class taught by this teacher. Other kids posted comments about the teacher.It was evident that most of the kids treated it as a joke.

When the teacher became aware of the site, she became very upset and felt threatened. She sought counseling and eventually took a leave of absence.

While expressing great sympathy with the teacher, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held that this conduct did not constitute a threat to the teacher as the term is used in deciding whether something is a “threat” for purposes of allowing restrictions on free speech.

Now, in reaching that decision, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania did NOT say what JS had done was “okay.” It only said that what he said on the website did not meet the legal test for a threat sufficient to restrict someone’s First Amendment rights. That is the point that @Hunt is making here. He’s NOT saying that what these young men said is okay. He is saying that it does not meet the legal definition of threat. How the teacher depicted on the site felt was not relevant–even though the teacher said she felt threatened AND she became so anxious about the situation that she felt unable to teach.

The Court did go on to say that the school had a right to expel the student because of the disruption the site caused. However, in doing so, it notes that a public school district has greater rights to restrict speech. This is one in a line of cases that have held that k.12 students’ free speech rights can be limited more than those of adults. These cases do not apply to colleges and universities. Some of you may think they should, but they don’t.

As I have said before, I disagree with Hunt as to whether marching through campus singing the song would create a hostile environment. I think it’s a close question, though, and it would depend upon the particular facts. Repeatedly singing the song would IMO create a hostile environment. However, there can be no hostile environment when there was no African-American student there who heard the song.

Draw an analogy to females working on a Wall Street trading floor. If a bunch of guys who work on the same floor get together for drinks and one says “I’d like to ___ that b__” and the others all agree and join in on commenting on her body parts, they are IMO poor excuses for human beings. But they haven’t created a hostile work environment. If they say the same things on the trading floor and she can overhear them, that would be evidence of a hostile work environment. However a one time event might not be enough. If it happens repeatedly, it probably would.

599

Sure are a lot of people on this thread who dont know much about the First amendment and the cases interpreting it. @hunt are you okay with child pornography? That is a first amendment issue Are you okay with prostitution? Another first amendment issue

600

@jonri I wouldnt want to have to defend the factual scenario you described in the last paragraph of post 597 It would at least in california be evidence of a hostile work environment and the jury would get to hear about it! It doesnt matter if it was offsite