[624] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
dartmouth, free speech, and dining.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Shulman)
Sat May 12 17:28:55 2001
Message-Id: <200105122128.RAA21761@department-of-alchemy.mit.edu>
To: mit-talk@MIT.EDU
From: Peter Shulman <skip@MIT.EDU>
Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 17:28:38 -0400
(a) If you want to know Dartmouth's position, you can read their
Community Standards of Conduct here:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~upperde/cond-regs.shtml
You don't have to agree with these standards, but as a private
university, Dartmouth is entitled to espouse and abide by them.
Furthermore, as they are available to the web-browsing
public-at-large, any potential student, faculty member, or grass-mower
not interested in following these guidelines is free not to join the
Dartmouth Community. Period. If you don't like it, don't go to
Dartmouth.
(b) MIT doesn't have a Standard of Conduct. Should we?
(c) Sidestepping entirely the content of the latest mit-talk thread,
could participants please avoid using loaded terminology? It's
confusing, an obvious rhetorical tool, and it generally obfuscates
what you are trying to say. Talking about "the left" is not clear.
You could be meaning "Democrats," "Socially-insulated Academics,"
"Socialists," "Marxists," or "Anarchists," or a host of other groups
who don't agree with you. You may not like any of these, but
ideologically, they are not the same. And, of course, there are
significant distinctions within each category.
Please be specific. If you do not know what you are talking about, go
rant elsewhere.
(d) As to interpretation of the Constitution, any reading of ANY text
is necessarily an interpretation. The dichotomy between
strict-constructivists (who claim to read the Constitution literally)
and readers with more interpretive strategies is a false one, for both
are always invovled in the process of interpretation, and both are
subject to the constraints of the ideologies they bring to the text.
What does reading literally mean? To know what the author meant? You
can't ask the authors of the Constitution, they died almost 200 years
ago. Is it in the language of the Constitution or the Federalist
papers? Yes and no: we can often come pretty close to understanding,
but there always remains a touch of ambiguity. I'd say go back and
study your history, and try to gauge the social texture in which the
Constitution was written and the significations of the language used
in it. But of course, this begs the question, even if we _could_ know
the Framers' intentions, does that mean we must agree that they are
right?
Before the Objectivists start flaming me, please note that I am not
saying a text is open to _any_ meaning, simply that it is impossible
to impart to a text a _single_ meaning, for ever reading is laden with
ideological assumptions, just as every one reading my little post here
brings to it as well. So don't accuse me of saying that communication
is impossible (which I have been accused of saying), because that is
just stupid. Though I am beginning to doubt the efficacy of
communication in this forum anyway....
(e) MIT stopped subsidizing Aramark's losses a little over a year ago.
Now (as opposed to then), if their outfits don't make money, neither
does Aramark. Hence the greater attention they've been paying to
Baker and Next Dining. For those who frequent there, is it working?
--**Peter
-----------
Peter A Shulman '01
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cell: 617 461-4538
