CSU and 'Conventions of Decency'

This Thursday, Colorado State University (CSU) junior J. David McSwane will be headed to a closed-door hearing to decide his future as editor-in-chief of the Rocky Mountain Collegian, CSU's student newspaper. The offense? On September 21, McSwane's paper ran a four word editorial, reading simply "Taser This: FUCK BUSH." In response, complaints have streamed in from all over the campus and the country -- and while the university at first demonstrated a principled willingness to defend the paper and McSwane, the announcement of closed-door hearings in the middle of political firestorms seldom bodes well for free speech.

From looking at some of the coverage of this case, a casual reader might think something like this has never happened before. But of course, not only have incidents like this happened before, the United States Supreme Court even heard a strikingly similar case decades ago and came down firmly on the side of free speech. In Papish v. Board of Curators of the Univ. of Missouri, 410 U.S. 667 (1973), the Supreme Court ruled that the expulsion of the editor of an underground student newspaper for publishing "indecent speech" violated the editor's First Amendment rights. The speech at issue? A headline proclaiming "Motherfucker Acquitted" (a reference to -- what else? -- the acquittal of a member of an organization named "Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker") and a cartoon depiction of a policeman raping the Statue of Liberty. In their per curiam opinion, the Court wisely held that "the mere dissemination of ideas -- no matter how offensive to good taste -- on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of 'conventions of decency.'" Similarly, in an earlier case, Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971), the Court found that the slogan "Fuck the Draft" written on a jacket was also an instance of protected speech. In Cohen, the Court provided its opinion of the f-bomb, highly relevant when considering McSwane's current controversy: "[W]hile the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man's vulgarity is another's lyric. Indeed, we think it is largely because governmental officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual."

So, yes, it is quite clear that McSwane's speech was protected, but Colorado State's Board of Student Communications (BSC) seems to be taking another angle. On September 27, they charged McSwane with violating CSU's student media Code of Ethics, which quaintly states that "[p]rofane and vulgar words are not acceptable for opinion writing." While the BSC has found a hook on which to hang McSwane, I am hard-pressed to see how such vague language constitutes a hard-and-fast rule, or how this guideline is of greater importance than the free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment and upheld by the Supreme Court in cases like Cohen and Papish.

In working in defense of the student press, I see cases like this quite often. Accordingly, I know from experience that the response to the free speech argument is often an exasperated "So we just have to let the student press say whatever they want, no matter how offensive or juvenile, with no consequences whatsoever?" The answer to this is both yes and no. First, the paper should suffer no "official" consequences, and state institutions cannot and should not be in the business of policing student media for potential for offense. However, this is not to say that the student media will suffer no consequences for the content of their publication. Indeed, the student media always faces consequences: in particular, they face the natural consequences of their speech. The CSU case is a perfect example of these consequences: here, the Collegian has taken tremendous heat for this editorial, losing substantial advertising revenue and being forced to reduce staff size as a consequence. McSwane and the Collegian staff have no doubt learned a great deal about political speech, the popularity of cussing with the polity outside the campus, and public controversy. Sadly, what the BSC is doing here is turning what would otherwise be a "teachable moment" into a much more depressing (and un-American) lesson about censorship and administrative prudery. The bottom line is that the Collegian editorial is clearly protected speech. You are free to disagree with it, you are free to condemn it, you are free to say it was unprofessional, but as soon as that disagreement and condemnation turns instead into official sanctions and forced resignations, our handy old First Amendment enters the fray.

CSU President Larry Penley ([e-mail]) should do the right thing and quash this hearing right now.

Comments

[Tubby]

When "free speech" turns into a license to use obscene, indecent language publicly, it is high time to revisit "free speech". We DO live in a civilized society, don't we?

[JesustheLiberal]

Tubby...When did you become keeper over what is and isnt civilized? I am offended by many things Ann Coulter says but I do not want her silenced because I think it's obscene. I am offended by Dick Cheney's f-bomb in the well of the senate but I support his right to be a foul mouth pig. You let the rest of the people of the United States know when you figure out who says what is and isnt obscene and what is and isnt free speech. But please do it out in the open so we can see who is deciding these issues!

[DemandTruth]

Yeah. A "civilized" society that tortures dogs and supports unending wars. That's WARS. Plural. Real civilized.

And once you go down that slippery slope, who's to say what's "indecent and obscene" and what's not?

The word fuck doesn't offend me. But what if I decide that something YOU have said offends me. Am I then allowed to sanction and punish YOU?

If you answered yes to this question, you obviously don't understand America and you don't belong here.

[AjCarbo12]

Lets talk about decency. Bush uses his free speech on a regular basis to tell the american people to "Fuck Off". He is commander and chief and what he says goes no matter how many people disagree. Instead of attacking this kid at CSU for lack of decency, I believe it would be much smarter to attack a man who's lack of decency has caused a genocide and added turmoil. But of course he has to go to court, he is not being patriotic and supporting our out of touch with reality commander and chief. Good for him......and to be honest he is just repaying the favor for every time our president has told us to "Fuck Off"

[Citizenofreality]

And let's not mention all those photographs of our commander in chief flipping the bird. We could dust some of those off and see just how outraged everyone would be.

[bethinCary]

What about Dick Cheney telling Sen. Leahy to "go f--- himself"?

That seems to have been protected.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I can understand the guy's frustration, there's
no one democrat nor republican that really seems
either willing or able to act against this
administration in any sort of meaningful or
effective way, there's some Independents,
but who really listens to them anyway.
I think it's pretty telling when the people
are saying one thing, and the pundits and
the next batch of candidates are saying something entirely different. Then you
look at little closer at the latter two,
and discover that they get their money from
all sorts of interesting places and activities,
and that that, much moreso than public
support, is what really ends up deciding
what goes on. Millionaires and billionaires
who vy for the Big Chair, and pretend to care
about whether or not you 'vote' for them.
It's a sham, a scam, a travesty, and if the
only thing people are going to get to vote on
is how much they'll be taxed in the future,
what's really the point of the entire process?

I think it's better that the guy who disrupted
Kerry got zapped rather than capped, but the
dynamic is the same, cops silencing people
that speak out-of-turn /= free and open forum.
Of course, in a forum like that, Kerry would
probably last about 30 seconds...and no
purple heart for getting your butt handed
to you in open debate.

What's really interesting about Kerry is that
despite his stand against Vietnam(AFTER participating), he's only gotten about luke-warm
on Iraq.

Iraq's about oil, it's about money, and it's about time it got ended. Who's the first
to go to Congress with the 'end the war' bill?