Anything "non positive" is hate speech?
Here's email that got Alex Myers, an Australian exchange student currently studying journalism at SUNY Oswego, part of New York's state university system, in trouble. (He was given a class assignment to profile a public figure and chose Oswego men's hockey coach Ed Gosek, and reached out to Gosek's fellow coaches at other schools.)
My name is Alex Myers, I work for the Office of Public Affairs at SUNY Oswego.
I am currently writing a profile on Oswego State Hockey head coach Ed Gosek and was hoping to get a rival coaches view on Mr Gosek.
If you have time would you mind answering the following questions.
1. How do you find Mr Gosek to coach against?
2. Have you had any interactions with Mr Gosek off the ice? If so how did you find him?
3. What is your rivalry like between your school and Oswego State?
Be as forthcoming as you like, what you say about Mr Gosek does not have to be positive.
Thank you, Alex Myers.
One coach wrote back that he found the last line of the email offensive. A day later, Myers was suspended indefinitely, pending a judicial hearing. The grounds:
Myers was charged with two counts. The first, a general charge encompassing "dishonesty," stemmed from Myers identifying himself as an employee of the Office of Public Affairs, where he was interning, even though that job had nothing to do with the class assignment.
The second charge is unfathomable. The university cites the section of its code of conduct that covers "harassment, intimidation, stalking, domestic violence, or creating a hostile environment through discrimination or bias toward any individual or group." Most chilling, the section also covers "invasion of privacy." For doing research for a profile of a public figure.
I know college kids like to call any authority figures "fascist," but man, Oswego, you're not exactly making your university a place where ideas can be exchanged freely.
This one has a happy(?) ending. After FIRE got involved, Oswego dropped the harassment charge. And at a disciplinary hearing last week, Myers was spared a suspension.
Of course, the "hate speech" prohibitions are violations of our right to free speech.
Source
5 comments:
"Political correctness is a far greater threat to our freedom and liberty than is terrorism..."
WORD OF THE DAY
FREEDOM OF SPEECH, n.
1) An inalienable individual liberty that has been under unrelenting assault since the Founding Fathers enshrined it in the first amendment.
2) The lynchpin of inalienable individual liberty, it's one of our inherent rights that Elected Tormentors love - in the abstract - and hate when rational adults start to exercise it.
3) Part of each individual's liberty birthright, it's easy to defend when the speech is soaring, but it becomes a real test of character for sovereign individuals, when the speaker is a porn wrangler like Larry Flynt or the hate mongers from Westboro Baptist, NAACP, and the Left in general...
Um, why didn't the guy just write, "I'm a journalism student writing a paper, and I would like your input" instead of using the false guise of a department with an official sounding name?
While I disagree with the harshness of the charges, the guy wasn't honest from the start.
If you learn to be a propegandists the NYTs has a spot for you
I agree with Anon 9:25 - this kid was not being honest and showing poor judgment by attempting to claim an association (and legitimacy) that he did not have.
The last line could have also been written better.
But, he should have been dealt with by someone from the faculty pointing out that he can't claim to be acting for the University on private schoolwork.
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