4 Reasons the "Free Speech On College Campus" Debate is Dumb

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4 Reasons the "Free Speech On College Campus" Debate is Dumb

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Tue Nov 24, 2015 3:07 pm

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-reasons-free-speech-college-campus-debate-dumb/
JF Sargent tried tackling the whole situation with that college in Missouri. It went exactly how you'd expect.
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Re: 4 Reasons the "Free Speech On College Campus" Debate is

Postby Marcuse » Tue Nov 24, 2015 3:31 pm

Well yeah. About as well as can be expected. I'm not shocked that Sargent has his views any more, so I'm not really interested in criticising them for what they are. What does annoy me is that he doesn't really look at the issue from any viewpoint other than his own. He obviously makes the attempt to do so, or at least reports that he does in his articles, but never seems to look at or address media or comment differing from his opinion except to tear it apart.

D-Logan posted a video in the SJA thread a while back critical of the Mizzou protests, and that brought up several things that really did make the protests and the protesters seem unreasonable. I accept the source is subject to his own opinion, but it means that stating categorically that there's no instances of students doing shitty things in the name of social justice is kind of untrue.
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Re: 4 Reasons the "Free Speech On College Campus" Debate is

Postby reallifegirl » Tue Nov 24, 2015 4:14 pm

Sarge's article bugs me more and more as time passes. He does have a couple of decent points, but he loses his own trail when he goes from "they're dumb kids and who cares" to "AND THEY'RE JUST LIKE THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT".

I put this in the comments, but I wonder what Sarge's reaction would be if Vagina Monologues was banned on a campus for being too sexual. That actually happened at my college. The school thought it had too much sexual discussion, so they banned it from being performed on school grounds. The woman who wanted to perform it wound up putting it on at a friend's apartment instead.

If they had replaced Vagina Monologues at my school with something pro-woman but non-sensual (example off the top of my head: Song of Bernadette), would that fly with him? It would be getting banned in favor of a play more in line with the school's population and ethics. Would he be totally okay with that and not consider it censorship in the slightest? Or does it only count if it's in line with his way of thinking to begin with?
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Re: 4 Reasons the "Free Speech On College Campus" Debate is

Postby Tesseracts » Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:50 pm

Prior to reading this article, I already decided I don't care about these college protests. I find them stupid and wrong, but I also believe they will not have long term negative influence on college culture. There's always going to be a few crazy people in every crowd, that's not evidence society will be destroyed. It's like South Park said, 1 out of every 4 Americans is retarded.

So, in that sense, Sargent has a point. This is behavior we can pretty much expect from college students, and shouldn't be overly threatened by. The media does tend to focus a lot on out of control kids. It's an old media narrative which will not go away any time soon. I'm ashamed to admit I have never heard of the example Sargent posted in the thread, and he is correct about it being a more serious threat to free speech. It's not getting as much media attention because it's not an out of control craaaaazy millennial who's responsible for the crime. I also had no idea this was a problem.

As an example of media bullshit, for this post, I tried to find the story of the girl who got fired for being mean to Black Lives Matter. Instead, I found out she wasn't actually fired. Something is wrong when the media covers college students being annoying more than they cover protestors being murdered.

Now, here's where I differ from Sargent. I think these protests are crazy, even if they are not as big of a threat as the media has been acting like. Sargent seems to think they are not crazy.

All I'm saying is that if you disagree with the protesters, it's really lame to pretend that it's over a "free speech" issue. Because what's actually going on here is that a largely powerless group (young minorities and women) are using the First Amendment to try to raise awareness of the problems they're facing, and our response is to shout at them to shut up and say they threaten our way of life. Which is, frankly, how people always respond when a new group tries to ask for equality, respect, and justice. And that's actually the point, because ...

Ugh. Really, Sargent, we aren't "pretending" it's a free speech issue. I think college kids trying to shut people up is actually a free speech issue. I also don't think either minorities or women are "largely powerless." Especially if they are privileged enough to be attending real colleges. Minorities and women have relatively less power compared to white dudes, but we're not a bunch of perpetual victims. It's completely fucking insane to form a hate mob over an email about Halloween costumes and no amount of comparing this to the god damn civil rights movement will change that.
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Re: 4 Reasons the "Free Speech On College Campus" Debate is

Postby ShuaiGuy » Tue Nov 24, 2015 6:37 pm

<Redacted>
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Re: 4 Reasons the "Free Speech On College Campus" Debate is

Postby Tesseracts » Tue Nov 24, 2015 6:53 pm

I don't think it's right to conflate the entire BLM movement with some of these crazy college activist stories. You can criticize extreme BLM protestors without hating the entire movement. Civil rights protestors did some dumb things too. There were actual riots and stuff.
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Re: 4 Reasons the "Free Speech On College Campus" Debate is

Postby ShuaiGuy » Tue Nov 24, 2015 7:09 pm

<Redacted>
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Re: 4 Reasons the "Free Speech On College Campus" Debate is

Postby Windy » Tue Nov 24, 2015 7:11 pm

SJWism went mainstream and now everyone's talking about it. 2016 is going to be an interesting year.

Tesseracts wrote: Something is wrong when the media covers college students being annoying more than they cover protestors being murdered.


And the media covers a kid getting arrested over a clock more than a lot of more important things.
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Re: 4 Reasons the "Free Speech On College Campus" Debate is

Postby SandTea » Tue Nov 24, 2015 7:15 pm



eh, protest whatever you want. I'm still gonna laugh at the silly things like the media thing in the article. "They were protesting the media too cause they didn't like how they were being reported on" well, you're not gonna change that by kicking them out of your free speech zone.
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Re: 4 Reasons the "Free Speech On College Campus" Debate is

Postby subotai » Tue Dec 01, 2015 4:27 pm

I feel I should apologise to Cracked. I've been very busy and feeling a bit run down lately and while I kn ow they need it to live, I just can't find the time to click on their Gawker-level bait articles.
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Re: 4 Reasons the "Free Speech On College Campus" Debate is

Postby NathanLoiselle » Wed Dec 02, 2015 1:32 am

Hell, I feel sorry for the comment section. I know they desperately need me to pour their hatred into by disapproving of me but I just can't find the energy or time to click on a J.F.Sargent article, none the less read it.
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