[612] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
RE: Dartmouth situation
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (esper)
Sat May 12 15:33:08 2001
From: "esper" <esper@MIT.EDU>
To: "Michael E Rolish" <merolish@MIT.EDU>
Cc: <mit-talk@MIT.EDU>
Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 15:35:51 -0400
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Mike:
What you say is all well and good, but in most civilised countries, there's
a codified system of rules. "You have the right to free speech, but not in
my house!" works all well and good when you don't have a constitution that
sets down basic rights for everyone, regardless of who or where they are. If
Dartmouth wants to lay down rules like that, they should make following
these rules mandatory for being admitted there in the first place. That way,
the students are asked to give up some of their rights in return for
protection from these rights being violated. But, once you go that far,
who's to stop you from regulating other aspects of students' lives?
What it boils down to is that colleges, universities, and other academic
institutions only have as much right to form policy as the members of said
institutions permit them to have. A school could stipulate that it has the
right to regulate freedom of speech. Nobody has to go there. However, I
don't know of any places that do in fact, actively regulate the First
Amendment to such a degree. To me, this seems to indicate that they have no
business getting involved with this in the first place. If they want to
crack down on individual rights, they should just do so openly, instead of
using the cowardly method that they're using right now.
Cheers,
Dustin Muniz
esper@mit.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael E Rolish [mailto:merolish@MIT.EDU]
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2001 3:20 PM
To: revprez@mit.edu
Cc: mit-talk@mit.edu
Subject: Re: Dartmouth situation
Prez,
I don't think this is about the First Amendment. Dartmouth,
after all, is a private institution.
I agree that most universities have been infected with moral
subjectivism (just look at the protests at Harvard, NEU,
UConn, etc.), but it is well within the college's rights
to determine what is and isn't proper conduct and act
accordingly.
These kids put out a publication, under the auspices of their
fraternity, that potentially ruined people's reputations and
implicitly advocated a serious crime.
If I were the president of a university where this kind of
thing happened, such jerks would be outta there in a second.
(Same thing for leftists who decide it is their "right" to
disrupt lectures, occupy buildings, etc.)
In short, "You have the right to free speech, but not in my
house!"
MER
--
Michael E. Rolish, MIT '04
Course VI-3 - Computer Science
Course VII - Biology
merolish@mit.edu
"Serenity comes from the ability to say 'Yes' to existence.
Courage comes from the ability to say 'No' to the wrong
choices made by others."
-Ayn Rand, "The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made"
