Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2001/04/09/two_cheap_shots.php
Monday, April 9, 2001
Yes, another 'free speech' issue of The Dartmouth Review. They—Dartmouth, other schools, 'official' college newspapers, the hordes of perpetually offended—make it too easy. That students still have time to squeeze in classes between diversity training, multicultural awareness sessions, judiciary hearings, and similar rot is surprising and speaks well of the liberal arts tradition—except, of course, when those classes are just more of the same.
How is it that so many in the Ivy League and at similarly-respected schools trip up on the lowest hurdle in the course, race?
Daily Dartmouth president Omer Ismail '02 told one of his reporters that the paper refused to sell advertising space to David Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture because of the advertisement in question's 'potentially inflammatory and offensive nature.' Student editors across the country have made similar decisions; several newspapers have even published apologies after having run the ad.
The Dartmouth Review, which ran Horowitz's 'Ten Reasons Why Reparations is a Bad Idea—and Racist Too' in our previous issue, will do no such thing.
Horowitz's writing occupies a gray area on today's left-leaning campus: his ideas diverge from the accommodating pabulum students are too-often spoon-fed. Horowitz's writing is in no way racist, as many have wrongly labeled it. It is, however, offensive, specifically to those who hold a near-monopoly on the discussion of racial matters on campuses.
Only three criteria stand between an advertisement and publication in The Review: fraudulence, indecent material, and the advertiser's inability to pay our going rates.
Unlike the Daily Dartmouth, The Review trusts its readers to reach their own conclusions about the arguments put forth in any advertisement, whether for the local watering hole or against an ill-conceived wealth-redistribution scheme.
The free flow of ideas is the basis of the liberal arts. In whatever way The Review can, we hope to inflame passions and stoke debate. Neither leave us worse off than heavy-handed close-mindedness in the name of our readers' delicate sensibilities.
'Wah-Hoo-Wah.' Alumni remember the rousing cheers through the stands at the football games of their youths. Even now, the suppressed cry rears itself when the 'Big Green' score one of their rare touchdowns. Recent events, though, may leave the cheer forever silenced.
Two brothers of the Psi Upsilon fraternity exercised their school spirit one evening last term from the balcony of their house. 'Wah-Hoo-Wah,' they screamed. 'Scalp 'em!'
Scalp whom? Who knows. Does a football cheer need an antecedent? ''Em' could be other house members or members of other houses, the players on our opponents' teams, or maybe just whoever happened to walk by on the sidewalk. One passer-by took particular offense—she screamed back. Is it any surprise that the raucous merry-makers took her up on her word and yelled even louder?
This passer-by, who spread word of the incident—hide when something you're involved in becomes an 'incident'—over campus via email is hardly to blame for the ensuing circus. Her reaction is only symptomatic of the odd 'civility' that has engulfed Dartmouth and other colleges.
Proper civility, in manner, poise, and speech, is a virtue that ought to be shared by all those old enough to know the word. The New Civility though is a cap on thought and speech, elevating offense, imagined offense, conceivable offence, to the level of assault. And when the New Civility is enforced, to the level of crime.
Psi Upsilon received, for its two members' entirely harmless speech (and let's be honest—was anyone harmed?) two terms of social probation, during which time they are effectively forbidden, by sanctions, from hosting public parties in their own house. Diversity, campus unity, and all those other buzzwords get thrown out the window: if you're not a Psi Upsilon, don't expect to attend a Psi Upsilon party for some time.
And if you are a Psi Upsilon, have fun at your diversity training.