Sunday, August 05, 2007

Delaware Satirist Expelled for "Degrading Women"

We read:

"A University of Delaware student suspended for operating an allegedly offensive Web site filed suit claiming his First Amendment rights were violated. Maciej Murakowski, 19, in April was asked to leave campus and suspended pending clearance from a "licensed mental health provider."

In the suit filed in U.S. District Court on Monday, Murakowski seeks reinstatement and claims that the site was clearly intended as satire. The sometimes silly, sometimes dark and sexually charged humor may have been in bad taste and immature, according to Finger, but postings were nothing more violent, ugly or threatening than the humor featured in old copies of National Lampoon.

One of the allegedly offensive posts involved a listing of fictitious sexual positions including one that mentions gang rape and another called "The Sociopath," which suggests killing a partner after sex.

In the suit, Finger points out that the university appeared to violate its own policies regarding free speech and treated Murakowski differently than others involved in recent free speech incidents on campus. One involved a graduate student who was affiliated with a white supremacist group and who operated a Web site espousing racial intolerance. In that case, school officials took no action stating that the graduate student, who worked as a teaching assistant, had the right to express himself no matter how ugly the expression....

The ruling cited Murakowski's Web site, describing the content as "degrading, demeaning and violent toward women . even some pieces that may start out wittily or humorously continue to descend into nothing more than a violent end or violent solution," according to court papers.

Source