A New York Times Ethicist column discusses this, but here's a more detailed account:
A student who wrote disparaging comments on an anonymous course evaluation now finds himself facing University sanctions.
Brian Beck, a landscape architecture major from Gordon, was found in violation of three University Code of Conduct regulations in a decision announced last week by University Judiciary. Beck was found in violation of the code due to:
• Disruption of the teaching evaluation process
• On grounds of multiplicity
• Harassment based on presumed knowledge of the associate professor's sexual orientation
Beck's violations stem from comments made on two course evaluations in Joseph Disponzio's History of the Built Environment course sequence.
On the first course evaluation, Beck was asked "What aspects of the course could use improvement or change?"
Beck wrote: "Joe Disponzio is a complete asshole. I hope he chokes on a dick, gets AIDS and dies. To hell with all gay teachers who are terrible with their jobs and try to fail students!" ...
[On the second course evaluation,] Beck answered the evaluation question "What were the most helpful/useful aspects of the course?" with "Joe Disponzio needs help with his issues dealing with homosexuality. Fags are not cool and neither are ney [sic] yorkers."
After comparing the two evaluations to exams from the class, Disponzio said he was able to identify the student he thought made the comments....
A letter was mailed to Beck's home address on Sept. 6 stating "it is alleged that Mr. Beck wrote threatening comments on course evaluations that were directed to a faculty member. Such comments indicated that he wanted the faculty member to die. Also the comments may have violated the University's anti-discrimination and harassment policy in that comments made may have been discriminatory regarding sexual orientation." ...
The University retained a handwriting document examiner to confirm the author of the evaluations. Roy Fenoff, a 2004 graduate of the University and forensic document examiner, was faxed the evaluations in question and Beck's class exams. He "concluded that the questioned writing was indeed authored by Brian Beck." ...
Beck's punishment includes writing a 1,200-word essay on how his remarks affect the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community and interact with a greater intolerance of the campus LGBT community, a letter of apology to Disponzio including constructive criticisms of his teaching style, and meeting with Michael Shutt, assistant dean of students, to discuss completion of SafeSpace training or other programs deemed appropriate....
The student's comments are obviously appalling -- but so is the punishment for the student's speech. The statements are not, I think, constitutionally unprotected threats; sometimes expressing a hope that someone would die may be seen as an implicit threat that the speaker will kill the person, but that doesn't seem to be so here.
But in any event, the university doesn't even claim that the student is punished solely because of the alleged threat: It expressly says that part of the reason for the investigation (and, one can infer, the ultimate punishment) was the anti-gay viewpoint of the statements. That's a pretty clear violation of the First Amendment.
The loss of confidentiality is troubling, too. Students were apparently assured that their comments are confidential. ("According to the Franklin College evaluation Web site, 'the Web-based course evaluation application has been designed to encourage candor. Your identity will not be associated with any of your responses.'") And while a student can reasonably infer that there'd be an exception for comments that really are death threats or evidence of crime, I doubt that a reasonable student would have assumed that the promise would be lifted when the statements expressed disfavored viewpoints.
And of course all this will leave students guessing when else they will be identified (and punished) for their evaluations -- what if a student, for instance, faults a professor for belonging to a religious group that the student thinks is irrational or evil (Scientology, extremist Islam, fundamentalist Christianity, and the like)? What if a student accuses a professor of being a "feminazi" or a "male chauvinist," and the university chooses to interpret that as resting partly on the professor's sex as well as the professor's views.
Finally, a hypothetical: Say that instead of faulting the professor in a class evaluation, the student had publicly written "comments [that] may have been discriminatory regarding sexual orientation" about a professor in a newspaper article, or in a blog post? I take it that under the University of Georgia's view, writing such a newspaper article would lead to discipline, too, right?
Perhaps a university could distinguish targeted speech sent (especially repeatedly) to the insulted person alone, such as insulting phone calls or e-mails. (I have touched on this question in the workplace context here, and there is some First Amendment precedent that may support this.) But both the student evaluation and the hypothetical newspaper article are speech conveyed to others (future students or administrators as to the evaluation, current students and other readers as to the newspaper article), and are entitled to full First Amendment protection. The University of Georgia does not, however, seem willing to give them this protection.
Thanks to Joel Grossman for the pointer to the New York Times piece.
Confidentiality. Riiight.
Oh,well, at least he learned something.
Unfortunately, any more measured and accurate criticism of teaching is going to be dismissed as "Becking" and thus unworthy of concern.
That or I rarely have strong opinions about teaching style in any case.
But we're definitely told consistently that the evaluations are confidential and that the professor will not see them until a significant period after grades are due. (as I recall they're only given to professors here during the summer after both semesters have ended)
Had the professor merely thought he recognized the handwriting and held a grudge against the student, I would not necessarily be more accepting, but I would be less angry. However, the school going to the trouble to get scientific handwriting identification from a document expected to be confidential is pretty offensive.
Sure this was an especially vicious review, but what if he had simply stated something to the effect of, "this teacher is an idiot and unqualified for teaching this course." I'm pretty sure this teacher would have taken the same efforts to identify him and destroy the confidentiality of the process.
I think the students should initate a boycott of the review process until the University can demonstrate that future breaches of the process won't be tolerated.
1. How did Beck know of Prof. Disponzio's sexual orientation in a "History of Build Enviroment" course, unless Disponzio raised the issue? It isn't a subject matter related issue.
2. Except for Disponzio's going public, how would Beck's confidential course evaluations have "affect[ed] the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community"?
Beck's punishment includes writing a 1,200-word essay on how his remarks affect the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community and interact with a greater intolerance of the campus LGBT community, a letter of apology to Disponzio including constructive criticisms of his teaching style, and meeting with Michael Shutt, assistant dean of students, to discuss completion of SafeSpace training or other programs deemed appropriate Is all of this in place of, or in addition too, the reeducation camp?
That being said, I think the speech should be protected, although the kid is clearly a bigot.
I also thought it was worth noting that the first bigoted comment was made at the beginning of the semester. At that point, the professor did nothing. The second comment was then made at the end of the semester, at which point the professor complained. I don’t think that’s clear if you just read the excepted portion of the story above.
While there may not have been a direct threat I believe the comments were menacing enough of the teacher in question to feel unsafe given that he may still have been teaching that anonymous person and that an investigation was warranted. If the university had not and a violent incident did occur many here would be wondering why the University did not investigate when they had the chance.
While teacher reviews should remain anonymous in general it is not reasonable to assume that such feedback forms are license to write wishes of physical harm and death for teachers without fear of repercussion.
somehow i don't think the student is being failed because the teacher is gay...
Ridiculous....All who do not adhere to the approved script of the thought police must be hunted down and re-educated.
Or do you think that the professor may also give the student an F -- and the administration may otherwise discipline the student -- for publishing a similar comment in the student newspaper?
For those of you out there who are instructors, do the institutions you work at have such rules or policies?
Should such a rule be an explicit or implicit part of any code of ethics for instructors?
Note that protection of student anonymity only applies to "Jane" at Brandeis, not Mr. Beck at UGA.
Question: what is the legal exposure of UGA and the individual administrators involved?
The Grade Appeals Committees here would overturn that F, as it is doubtful that such a criterion ("You get an F if you send a letter to the paper berating me") would be included in the course syllabus. We can find for the student in only two instances: the grading criteria were not clear in the syllabus, and/or the criteria were not uniformly applied.
I'm surprised the actually let the teacher see the student's handwritten evaluations, for just this reason. At the universities I've been associated with (as a student and instructor) the professors are given typed versions of the student's written comments.
It is much more likely that the first evaluation was in the middle of the term, and the second evaluation at the end of the term.
During my (short) stint as a T.A. and another (even shorter) as an adjunct instructor, all courses had that schedule of student evaluations.
It is my experience that students are routinely assured that the evaluations are confidential, and are meant to be separated from the grading cycle (so that evaluations and grades).
This story will most certainly travel around college campuses, and cause students to wonder just how confidential such writing actually is. Thus, it will cause a chilling effect on any students who think a particular instructor is spending too much time talking about his sexual orientation/political cause of choice rather than the class material.
(Such events are rare, but not unknown...and the students ought to be able to complain properly.)
It's not much of a threat, seeing as it's a general "I hope he does these things and then dies as a result," and not a "I am going to do these things to him, and then he'll die." The latter is an obvious threat. Saying, "I hope Senator Clinton gets gonorrhea" isn't a threat unless I have some plan on making her contract it.
Now, if the author is HIV positive, and this was actually a badly-worded request for a blowjob, that could be also viewed as a threat. Doesn't seem likely, though.
Really? Perhaps your community has difference reasonable expectations, but even if taken literally as a statement it's clear that the "dick" the student hoped the teacher would chock on was not the student's. How then can the statement reasonably be interpreted as a clear and imminent threat?
True in theory, but just about everone would be inclined not to give the benefit of doubt to someone who wrote something like that about him.
If you think of anonymity as being part of a contract (1) the school promises your evaluation will be anonymous (2) you promise to submit only one such evaluation, so that your opinion does get more weight than other participating students.
It appears that the student here violated his part of the deal first, and in doing so, released the university from any moral obligation to maintain his anonymity.
It is not right for one student to try to drown out the voices of other students by submitting multiple evaluations. In cases where this occurs, it is proper for the university to investigate the identity of that person.
Second,
This harmful and discriminatory speech, attacking the teacher for his sexual orientation, was entirely inappropriate. In a school setting, attacks of this nature could very well disrupt the emotional well-being of the recipient and negative affect their academic performance.
In this case, these attacks were directed at a professor, who is in a position of power vis a vis the student. I think he should just accept the attack by this pathetic jerk and move on. However, if such attacks were directed at another student, making it difficult for that student to function in an academic environment, then I think it would be fair to take actions against the perpetrator.
Even if the "attacks" were directed toward another student, it wasn't that student who could read them, but rather the professor. If I wrote, "Michelle is gay and I hope she gets AIDS and dies," if Michelle can't read/see that I wrote that, what's the harm to her?
If the answer is that the perpetrator, making an anonymous statement, then is more likely to make a statement directly to the other student, well, that seems like prosecuting someone for what they might do.
If the teacher went into his life style to such an extent that he really pissed off the student who was expecting a class on "History of the Built Environment" not the gay life.
It is not clear that Beck is a bigot. He may be just very mad at this instructor. In order to judge we should look at the other evaluations. Maybe Beck was just more "outspoken" in his dislike then others in the class.
I would suggest anyone who sees this as a threat is an idiot. One might fault the student for failing to recognize administration idiots would see it as a threat. But, take a moment and consider the weapon mentioned.
but he was promised confidentiality by UGa, and instead got re-education camp. and anyone dumb enough to think forcing this kid to write 1200 word essays will further actual tolerance is even dumber than Beck seems to be.
Note to self (2): don't attend the University of Georgia.
Note to self (3): don't hang out with this guy, Beck, as he's apparently a semi-literate jerk.
Note to self (4): don't promise anonymity if you don't mean it.
Sheesh.
(BTW, the evaluations were apparently at two different points in the course: there was a lengthy time between them, and the professor got evaluations from multiple students each time. Read the Red &Black article.)
That's great stuff! Greatly ironic, that is. I think it's the author who has the issues w/homosexuality.
And is it the VC consensus that saying "I hope ____ dies" is not a threat?
They promised anonymity. They meant to induce reliance on the promise to get me to say what I really felt. I did so. QED.
How is this harmful. I would say that it is offensive, so what? When did we get the right to not be offended and how far does it go? I need to know because I have a loooong list of things that offend me. That being said this sounds like a case where one idiot met a group of idiots.
Were these course evaluations?
I hope Osama bin Ladin dies (if he's not dead already). Clearly, though, I have no means to kill him. It's hardly making a threat against him.
It depends on the context. 'I hope you die by a .50 caliber rifle shot through your window of your house which is at 123 Elm Street at 5:30 pm tonight' might be interpreted quite differently.
I can't speak for whether it's a VC consensus, but it's certainly my view. Things like that are said all the time, and hoping for someone to die (without any other action) doesn't usually make the subject die any sooner.
That's where I draw the line, anyway; I know many people say "I'm going to kill so-and-so" without any real intent of murder, so it's not always clear-cut. It seems unlikely that it is a real threat in this case, as the professor survived the semester relatively unscathed.
GV, there is no double counting. Suppose, for example, I tell my attorney in a privileged conversation about my racist and homophobic views. My attorney reports me to the police, who lock me up for thought crime.
There are two independent wrongs. First, the thought crime charge violates the First Amendment. Second, my attorney was wrong to breach the attorney-client privilege.
The wrongs affect different policies. There is a general First Amendment interest in being able to hold viewpoints, even highly offensive viewpoints, and even homophobic viewpoints.
There is another, more specific, interest in being able to be candid when there has been a promise of confidentiality. Here, because the University of Georgia has demostrated that it not only condones but actively aids and abetts piercing anonymity in its student evaluations, it can expect that process to be completely shot in the future.
It is true that if something is extreme enough, e.g. death threats, it justifies both falling outside First Amendment protection and outside the promise of confidentiality. But that doesn't conflate the two analyses.
That much is clear.
But is the University supposed to intervene only where abject threats are made?
I am not sure where to draw the line.
But to label anyone who reacts with anything other than knee-jerk libertarian outrage on behalf of young Beck is to miss the point.
I can imagine an analysis which presumes a "social contract" between the univ. and the student. If so, then the student can break and, here, probably broke that contract.
Now, we are left with assessing the proper punishment.
Perhaps in context with other statements, it could form a true threat. But this is not such a context.
2. The student's comments are not related to a course evaluation. Hence, they are outside the scope of confidentiality. Pointing out that my law and feminism professor has halitosis and is morbidly obese is not protected. Pointing out that she ignored important perspectives would be valid and protected. The guarantee of confidentiality is extended to course evaluations, not personal insults (or, if you are wuss, you may read the above as "threats")you may wish to deliver.
3. U[sic]GA is a cow college.
4. If the world needed an enema, Athens, GA is where you would inject...
It's determinant the school did NOT see the Beck comments as a threat by their inaction in calling the police. The school took no action security-wise; all acts the school took indicate vindicative intent.
I'm actually intrigued by this. Specifically what sort of comments are vacuous.
I suppose my comments might be considered vacuous, but it's usually because I don't have much to say in response to a question phrased "what could the professor do to create a better learning experience."
Generally either
1. I'm relatively pleased with the experience and can't think of specific recommendations. (would a comment saying "I like powerpoints, more powerpoints be vacuous?)
2. the experience was relatively neutral and I don't really expect that writing "class was extremely boring" would produce any appreciable results.
About the only specific thing I can recall writing on such an evaluation is "It would be better if 30% of the material were not crammed into the last 2 days of class."
UGA acted badly here, no doubt, but it's ridiculous to argue that the teacher brought this on himself because he was too gay in class. Gimme a break. No one has any clue what, if anything, he said in class (and I'd be interested to hear how mentioning the fact that he is gay, however it came up, constitutes a lecture on "gay life"). The kid is quite obviously a prick, and was surely a prick before he ever stepped foot into this classroom.
"The university should not pursue this investigation. Even if a student violated its code of conduct by making a homophobic slur, for the university to abandon its pledge of anonymity is a cure worse than the disease."
PC is inevitable. We liberals all think alike. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
The kid should also change colleges NOW...and sue to get his transcript if necessary.
To No Surprise: that *is* a course evaluation. If the 'professor' is a an asshole, you don't learn much. Once had one of those, a marxist asshole teaching economics to a class consisting 100% of engineers and hard science students. He was such an asshole we got him fired for ideological grading.
IANAL but prosecution under 18 USC 241, at a guess. If the Feds were interested, which they won't be.
I don't know if this policy is made clear to students on the evaluation forms or not. If it is not, then it should be. (Students shouldn't be misled about how far their anonymity extends.) But I think it's a perfectly reasonable policy per se.
The point of anonymous evaluations is so students can communicate criticisms of the teacher's pedagogy without worry, not so students can communicate anything at all with total impunity.
The particulars of the student's punishment were asinine, especially the essay.
Where there is smoke there is fire. Here's an idea-- let's search the kid's house and hard drive; there might be a picture of a noose lying around somewhere!
This is a _course_ evaluation. The student did not provide a _course_ evaluation. I highly doubt that most students at UGA or any school are going to extrapolate that they might be identified and face consequences for offering constructive criticism based on this extreme example.
If course evaluations go into official evaluations of professors, the professors have every right to expect that those course evaluations be made in good faith and act to defend themselves and their reputation when something grossly inappropriate is submitted to the school. In this case, the numerical evaluations do count but are separate from the written comments. ("Written comments are not used in the tenure evaluation process," he said. "Only the numerical scores are used. Only the teacher sees the written evaluation.") It isn't clear if the students in this course knew how their evaluations were processed, but it is reasonable to surmise that the students knew the evaluations were taken seriously by the school and not merely between themselves and the professor. Teachers have ethical obligations to grade their students fairly; the same is true in reverse, and when that is not honored, the expectation of confidentiality goes along with it.
The point of forcing Beck to write an apology letter wasn't to engineer a deep seated change of heart, although it would be worth a try, and there is no chance of that if the student isn't confronted with it. The point is to send a signal that exposing people to your hateful vitriol is not acceptable.
Why isn't it? Isn't that the crux of the free speech argument, that bigotry may be ugly but not the university's business?
At the college level, I am torn. Professors can be expected to be the better person and move on. But bigots don't compartmentalize their bigotry, and the point of official rebuke here is to protect other students from people like Beck, as Disponzio said: "I'm not too concerned with myself, but we had a transgender student in the class."
Silencing Beck is awfully dissatisfying, but if it makes it marginally less likely that he's going to spread his hate around in a way that dehumanizes other kids and makes them more likely to be targets, it might be worth it.
With younger students, a mutual respect policy that bans speech like "fag" or "n&&$#%" is absolutely necessary. K-12 kids have a right to an education and no reasonable person can expect a teenager to have the emotional resilience to blow off what (without the speech code) would be a significant rise in personal attacks and slander. One kid's right to get an education and feel safe is more important that another kid's right to express their ignorant beliefs. I'm not sure that college age young adults are all that much more mature and thus in need of less protection by the institutional authority, but it is a fair question.
I wonder, if the professor was black and the student, on his confidential form, had written "I wish Mr. X would go back in time and face the KKK" would that be acceptable speech? It isn't a credible, direct threat from the individual student to teacher. That doesn't make it acceptable conduct in a civilized institution of learning.
so now it's not enough to breach confidentiality promises and send him to thinkcamp - you have to silence him, eh? all in the interest of society I'm sure.
Could a school punish based on some sort of time/place/manner rule, on the theory that one can say such things but not in every time and place? Possibly -- but absent a clear rule with a unambiguous and non-overbroad definition, that's irrelevant here.
I think the confidentiality question is more interesting. Is it an enforceable promise by the school? Does reversing the policy violate due process?
Assuming for the minute that the school was not bound by confidentiality (a big assumption, but for the sake of argument), I have no problem with the more-speech remedy of publicizing it and showing everyone the type of vermin this guy is.
I
Quite likely, but, so what? There's no private right of action created by FERPA. The remedy is for the US Dept of Educ to cut off funding to the school. So, the school answer is "When pigs fly."
tarheel: Agreeing that Beck is, at best, immature, and, more likely -- as you state -- "a prick", I still can't think of any way Beck would know that Prof. Disponzio's sexual orientation in a "History of Build Enviroment" course, unless Disponzio raised the issue. If Disponzio raised the issue, he can't complain about a comment. If Disponzio didn't raise the issue, then Beck was taking a cheap shot thinking he could get away with it under a promise of "confidentiality."
That leads to my second query:
Even "a prick" has privacy rights.
I've already said the school was wrong. I am just saying the teacher is not at fault for the kid's comments, the kid is.
And what if the kid was right? What if this professor's teaching style is simply "too gay" or "ney yorkish?" New Yorkers are notoriously arrogant and uppity; gay new yorkers ten times so. Maybe the professor should look in his heart before lashing out at the poor kid. It's amazing how authoritarian gays (and liberals in general) can be.
What makes you think the kid needed any actual EVIDENCE to conclude the guy was gay? There's a lot of people who find calling someone "Gay" to be the ultimate insult, and he seemed pretty pissed at the professor.
It's entirely possible (heck, judging by the appalling literacy and sentence structure I'd say there's a darn good chance) that he had absolutely NO clue on the professor's sexual orientation and was simply flaming the guy.
Go hang out in less literate forums than this, and you'll find a lot of teenage and barely post-teenage twerps whose idea of a cutting retort is "OMG, YOU FAG".
I have no idea whether the Professor disclosed his sexual orientation, or why it would even matter (I met the wives of several of my professors, and I can't imagine writing a scathing screed about their heterosexuality because of it) if he did, but I wouldn't start by assuming he did.
Tarheel is right. There is no evidence that the teacher "raised the issue" of his sexulity in his class in any improper way. I don't go on about my heterosexuality in my classes, but many-most of my students know I'm straight because I occasionally make a passing reference to my wife, and sometimes she comes and meets me at the school and students see her.
Gay people are under no obligation to affirmatively *hide* their sexual orientation, and not hiding it is in no way "raising it" such that those remarks are remotely appropriate. If I mention that I went to my family Seder over the weekend, am I "raising" my Jewishness in a way that justifies rabidly anti-Semetic remarks on my evaluations (which, I stress, I've never had).
There's obviously more to this case than just that issue, but that's my two cents.
"Based on your embarrassingly pitiful and incompetent attempt at a classroom evaluation, we have determined that you were erroneously admitted under the academic standards reserved for running backs. Since you have no prospect of leading us to a BCS bowl, your enrollment is hereby terminated."
Nick
"Choke on a dick [...] and die" is a nasty insult that really doesn't even have to be specifically directed toward a gay man. It would be a grossly rude thing to say toward a straight man or a woman of any sexual orientation, is completely inappropriate and obviously adds nothing to the course evaluation as it hasn't the slightest relationship to the course or even the teacher's pedagogical style. The fact that the student's comments were filled with anti-gay remarks is just the icing on the cake.
Honestly, the only possible wrongdoing I can see on the administration's part is the violation of anonymity, if (and only if) the exceptions to the anonymity rule were not made clear to students.
By the way, if this student had said something to the effect of, "His comments about his homosexual lifestyle made me uncomfortable," I would be rushing to the student's defense. But "choke on a dick"? Give me a break.
LOL, cheers to that!
You mean, constitutionally protected speech? Yes, it would be. It scares the crap out of me that kids nowadays think it wouldn't be. The indoctrination they get in schools today must be absolutely extraordinary.
"Acceptable speech" is of course in the eye of the beholder and has no practical meaning -- not in a free society, at any rate.
The real question is: Is that vulgar, rude, and ridiculously emo statement constitutionally protected, permissible speech? If so, everything else is just window-dressing -- if he has the right to make that statement in the open, he certainly has the right to make it on an anonymous questionnaire. In the context of a course evaluation ("what is your opinion?"), the student may not even have a requirement to support the accuracy of the statement -- it's his opinion.
But even public universities must be able to take some action in cases like this, right? Saying "fuck you" to someone's face is constitutionally protected speech, but if a student did that every time he crossed paths with another student or faculty member on campus or routinely shouted political speech in the middle of class, would the First Amendment stop the administration from expelling that student for being grossly disruptive?
I guess I'm just saying that punishing a student for obviously lacking the basic maturity expected of an adult seems like a far cry from, say, forcing students to abide by a speech code mandating "respect for all belief systems" or other nonsense.
Yet surely the university could discipline the student for this reason if he answered the professor's question in class, "What do you think of this point." with "I hope you choke on dick and die." I see no legal reason to differentiate these two cases. Of course in either case it's important to protect expression of certain ideas but I see no reason to believe the student would have been discipline if he had written a respectful restrained criticism of the professor for presenting material advocating homosexuality.
-----
As far as the expectation of privacy I think this is an overblown worry. I think most students instinctively understand that their privacy will be protected so long as they give serious reviews about the class but may not be if they use it to make hostile, irrelevant insults.
This might not be easy to characterize in a definition but I think in most cases the distinction is pretty clear.
And honestly, if anyone thinks that the thought experiment here describes an unreal course of action (i.e., the FBI boss should just "grin and bear it"), then I must have found someone who is more hardcore about free speech than I am.
If you bothered to read the rest of my post in good faith, you would know that it would be in the interest of other students at the university who might be affected by those who create an inhospitable environment, not "society," whose interests IMO are not served by PC training that usually leaves the audience even less receptive to being respectful than they were to begin with. Requiring people to keep their bigoted thoughts private is silencing, but it also offers some protection to the future targets of their hate speech. I'm skeptical that this kind of protection is necessary or appropriate in a college setting, but I wouldn't want to be forced to live with or near someone like Beck as it most definitely has the very real potential to be upsetting and thus harmful to my education. This is the basis for speech codes in high school settings, and one that is entirely necessary.
Now, I am pretty comfortable with the idea that schools can and should expect their students to treat all members of the community with a basic level of decency because decency is something worth promoting by institutions that pass along wisdom. I hope school is never reduced to being merely a collection of classes to train people to have discrete, measurable skills. To that end, a much better response would have been no forced apology, no PC training, but some public bully pulpit leadership on the part of the University administration. This Beck kid should feel ashamed for what he did, but instead he is likely going to feel validated, and that strikes me as a collective failure of the school as well as other adults who want to turn this into a free speech cause celebre instead of calling out this coward hiding behind the letter of one policy in an effort to violate both the letter and spirit of an altogether more important value.
Only if the university can point to instances where they've gone to these lengths to track down and punish students who submitted extra forms, including extra forms that said "Professor X is fantastic!"
Step 1: Obnoxious college student expresses obnoxious ideas obnoxiously.
Step 2: Obnoxious college student is ordered to apologize at length, and hear why people think what he said was so obnoxious.
That seems about right. And I would say the same thing if a student made similar remarks in a similar way about, say, a conservative Christian professor's religion.
Professor Volokh writes:
I don't know if failing is appropriate, but I hope that you would significantly dock the grade. You are a law professor, and you are training lawyers. A lawyer who puts personal insults in the middle of an otherwise sound pleading could be sanctioned, and certainly hurts his case.
If your students can't express themselves professionally in an exam, they are going to make horrible lawyers. And their grades should reflect that.
As obvious as that should be, I've found raising it to be the third rail of conversation with ideologues left, right and otherwise.
Quite honestly, as someone with libertarian leanings, I think any libertarian who doesn't believe and live by that idea is most likely a sociopath.
You mean, constitutionally protected speech? Yes, it would be. It scares the crap out of me that kids nowadays think it wouldn't be. The indoctrination they get in schools today must be absolutely extraordinary."
Really, this is clear as day? Wishing that a specific person be lynched is not a threat because it comes dressed up in an absurd hypothetical? "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" isn't constitutionally protected speech. The indoctrination that Mssrs. Scalia et. al. got from wherever must have been absolutely extraordinary.
Does this mean that the instructor made a report about the evaluations to inside counsel, obtained a waiver, and then started looking through exams to match the handwriting?
Or did the instructor delay making a report, search through the exams himself (violating any annonymity)identify the offiending student, and then make a report seeking a waiver?
Maybe he never sought a waiver at all, but just, hypothetically like, might have.
"LM: As has already been pointed out on this thread, there's no reason as yet to believe he did submit multiple evaluations. If you have evidence of same, please submit it; otherwise, you're off base."
My emphasis.
Let's say this kid sued and "won" a judgment. Now, he's looking for a job, and the potential employer sees that when doing an evaluation, the kid made repeated, obnoxious, and bigoted remarks and then sued to enforce his right to be an obnoxious jerk. What employer in their right mind would hire him?
The school is doing the kid a favor by giving him a dose of reality when the stakes are relatively low.
It isn't protected speech when worn by a student inside a high school full of minors and where in loco parentis still applies. In a public university setting, it most certainly would be...
So, instead of invoking a University disciplinary proceeding and Univ. making it a public matter, would your advice to the Prof. had been "Sue the little *** for intentional infliction of emotional distress"? The little twit want's to become an architect, so he should have income to collect against, and intentional torts aren't dischargable in bankruptcy. That appears a preferable course to giving the little jerk a potential 1983 action for violating his privacy rights.
The student committed an act of juvenile asininity, and was rewarded with the choice to complete a little ritual mortification and self-criticism, or roll up his tent and go home. Fair deal, in my book. He should STFU and keep his name out of Google.
If he wrote that "Prof. Doolittle subjects his students to a daily updates on the neverending spectacle of his admittedly colorful personal life while avoiding the class's putative subject altogether," we would not be having this discussion.
"How is this harmful. I would say that it is offensive, so what? When did we get the right to not be offended and how far does it go? I need to know because I have a loooong list of things that offend me."
True... some leftists think all conservative ideas are a form of hate speech. And all ideas that are in conflict with their's are conservative.
Its why you can't allow these kinds of rules...
And upon actually reading the links provided by EV with details about this incident, I do not think the rescinding of anonymity is justified.
It appears that I am wrong, and that these two evaluations were not submitted simultaneously, thus unfairly magnifying the voice of the student in question.
In that case, I would say it is improper to violate the student's anonymity.
The question of eval form anonymity is the smaller issue; the larger issue is the attempted indoctrination effort to make the student 'right in the head.' Sorry folks, that re-education stuff is downright Orwellian. To plagiarize Glenn Reynolds, "they said if Bush was re-elected, there would be state efforts to re-educate and brainwash college students... and they were right!"
I have a question here. Clearly his speech is consitutionally protected in so much as he won't go to jail or be fined for those statements. But does the college have no rights here? Is the college forced to associate with this student that made reprehensible written statements to a professor while in school?
It's not like his comments were plucked out of his diary or even posted on a website. He made these comments on an evaluation, which serves as an official correspondence of sorts.
Clearly he has no constitutionally protected right to go to college. Isn't that a privelege of sorts? If so, can't the college end their association with this student unless he writes the apology?
Just curious.
For all the dumbassitude displayed by this moron I don't see any evidence that he submitted extra evaluations.
My reading of the story is that the prof had multiple evaluations from the student because the student was offensive on evaluations for both semesters of a two-semester sequence. I don't know what "multiplicity" means at UGA, but it could mean repeat offenses, not too many forms.
Also, I believe that the exams come into this as handwriting samples, not as places where the student wrote homophobic comments.
I agree. This is not the sort of situation I had in mind. While I do not approve of malicious gossip of this sort, and think people who engage in malicious gossip are petty and low, I do not think it can or should be punished in the vast majority of situations. (I might make an exception if such gossip was likely to result in incitement to violence, but an isolated statement such as this is a far cry from that.)
The 14' banner was unveiled on a public street as TV cameras went by, not at school. It was during school hours, but students had been permitted (not required) to leave school to watch the Olympic torch run through town, and the student in question had not actually reported to school. They didn't suspend him for truancy, they suspended him for 10 days for the content of his speech. Many adults were also in the audience. The idea that this banner would influence kids to try drugs is laughable, but the court ultimately decided that no matter how absurd, the implication of the statement was related to illegal behavior that the school had a good reason to discourage.
A student of any age telling their black teacher that they hoped for a lynching, no matter how absurd the context ("I hope you go back in time..."), is still related to illegal behavior the school has a good reason to discourage. The age of the student is not irrelevant, but the point of bringing up the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case was to remind us that "constitutionally protected" is based on an interpretation of the constitution and that dissenting from the prevailing interpretation is not evidence of "indoctrination" as DRB claimed. His claim to certainty, be it about what the Constitution actually means in some existential sense, or in what the Constitution has been taken to mean by Supreme Court jurisprudence, strikes me as rhetorical flourish and unnecessarily condescending. So I called him on it.
Expressing the hope that a member of a minority group die because they are a member of the minority group is threatening. The professor in this UGA situation didn't feel personally threatened, but he did worry about whether other students at the University might one day be threatened by someone so unhinged as Beck. This was a reasonable worry and exposing this student to the University authorities was a responsible course of action. The effect on other members of the minority group is the same consideration that hate crimes laws are based on, and if people want to argue that such laws should be considered unconstitutional, I'm sympathetic. But they have not so far been considered unconstitutional, so I have a hard time imagining the University losing a case about their harassment policy and enforcement thereof, based on the information provided in the one article I have read.
The old saying:"opinions are like a$$holes. Everybody has one and some of them stink.
This is pretty absurd. If the school had not unmasked his anonymity, no one would associate the name "Brian Beck" with "homophobic asshole" in the first place.
The school definitely is not doing Mr. Beck any favors. The idea that it is, is just crazy. Mr. Beck would have been much better off anonymous.
And eventually someone noted that the student was cited for multiplicity.
However, from reading the Red and Black account it is pretty clear that the student submitted an offensive evaluation in January and a second one after a class ending in the spring semester; Disponzio let the first one drop but resumed the pursuit after the second incident.
So the multiplicity was not ballot-box stuffing; it was repeated annoying conduct, rather than one isolated incident.
It's pretty clear from the referenced article that Beck's two reviews were given for different semesters and that he was not stuffing the ballot box. The first was sent in 'January' and the second after the 'spring semester'. The article talks about the 'course sequence'. It seems clear that the reference to 'multiplicity' has to do with his repeating the offense of sending a review deemed inappropriate, not with his inappropriately sending two reviews.