Yale Daily News

China must really be rubbing off on Yale. Let's ban anything that offends us!

Colleges have to rpotect their endowments from lawsuits. Try calling someone a "slut" the business world. Neither college nor the workplace is a place to harass, save it for your own time or virtually any other public forum.

You realize that it was the YDN's own advertisement for JuicyCampus (masquerading as a loathsome "article" by Heather Robinson) that made the website an issue at Yale in the first place, right?

#2, JuicyCampus is "virtually any other public forum."

The Offices of Student Affairs are like the Stasi, only less accountable.

How typical of the feminazis to want to ban something that dares to conflict with their sexist ideology.

They have only succeeded in making it more popular. Down with tyrants!

The burning issue for universities seems to be how "free" is "free speech". Several years ago many opted to ban free speech under the euphemism of "speech codes" banning "offensive" speech. The fly in the ointment is, offensive to who? Thus Universities find themselves in the Orwellian position of proclaiming "freedom of speech", while punishing free speech that "offends". The definition of who is offended legitimately, and who is not, defines the true seat of ideological power in the institution. Some speech is more equal than another.

A University is not like a business, in that a business is dedicated to a particular product or point of view, and not its competitor, in order to sell it to you. The University, on the other hand is dedicated to the free exchange of ideas, to be considered by you, as an individual with free will.

The problem with Universities since the adoption of "offensive" speech codes is that they have chosen a particular ideological product (that which is not "offensive") shunned its competitor (that which is "offensive), and is spoon feeding it to the students, as if unsure of the power of some ideas over others.

The argument of anonimity of speech vs."standing behind your words" is antithetical to democratic dialogue. Indeed one of the greatest tools of social coercion is to force all speech to be sourced to an individual. Indeed, one of the only outlets of freedom in oppressive regimes is underground literature. The ultimate expression of this approach to "free speech" being making one's vote in the open for everyone to see, as is done in Cuba, so dissenters may be quickly identified.

The university's instinct to withold action for now and battle noxious ideas with more worthy ones is the only approach consistent with the university's stated goals of free speech and academic freedom.

Juicy is disgusting but I don't know the legalities of banning it. Trademark might be one angle. If the NFL can regulate the use of "Super Bowl," Yale should be able to regulate how its brand is used or misused. I'd like to see them force SWAY to drop the Y since it was not a university sponsored event and damaging to the Yale brand.

So you Smart Folks at Yale are going to save Free Speech by destroying it? And of course your commitment to Free Speech remains consonant with the obligation to protect open and wide-ranging public discourse by stamping your boot heel down on any "open and wide-ranging public discourse" you disagree with.

Swell.

George Orwell....Eat Your Heart Out.

Are we going to ban all anonymous message boards at Yale? There are plenty of them out there, I am a member of many of them, and if Yale bans them, I for one will be extremely angry.

If they violate my first amendment rights, I will be extremely pissed.

Jennifer, the difference is that in the corporate world, you are being paid for your services. On college campuses, the student is paying for the college's services.

College is about the free exchange of ideas. Even ideas that are offensive to you.

Unaccountable higher education administrators have failed in their duties to protect this freedom of ideas and chose to use their powers to make life easier for themselves (anti-speech codes). Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

yes kids, speech is free.

you can say or print whatever you want.

But if that speech is judged to be libelous, violate copywright, or fraudulent, you will have to pay for it.

Or at least pay a lawyer.

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. SHAME ON ALL OF YOU

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> But the same protection might not extend to anonymous speech, Yale College Dean Peter Salovey said. “Anonymous speech does not enjoy the same protections afforded to other kinds of expression — expression where individuals stand behind their words, by Yale’s policies,” he said.

Actually, historically, it has just as much protection. How else do you expect whistleblowing to be a reasonable option? How do you think one stops reprisals on the speaker by those accused of wrongdoing?

This is so wrongheaded, it's not even funny.

FREE SPEECH IS ABOUT DISPUTE.

Anonymous speech should always be taken with a hefty grain of salt -- and gossip is even moreso, anonymous or "nonymous".

Many important speeches have first appeared in an anonymous form. Many individuals have spoken out against tyranny because they could do so without fear of instantaneous and massive reprisal that would utterly destroy them and silence their message before it even was heard.

Shame on ANYONE who does not grasp the importance of anonymous speech in a free society -- ESPECIALLY those of you who have reached college age -- or better -- and speak out against it.

Yes, there will be abuses -- but the fact that there are people out there who will speak racism from behind white sheets does not mean all must speak in the open light of day.

"The only social order in which freedom of speech is secure is the one in which it is secure for everyone... and, as those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognize, it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of the censorship. Their power is limited to legitimizing the idea of censorship."

- Aryeh Neier -

"'We must all be prepared to sacrifice ourselves for the common good.'... But that's exactly what destroys everyone's freedom, because people who have a choice will never all agree with any one person's idea of what's best for them, and the only way you'll ever get them to go along is by force. The institutions of a free society become obstacles to the plan and get swept aside to be replaced by coercion. And once you've made that start, the end of the line is the secret police, the Gestapo, the Gulag, and the concentration camp."

- James P. Hogan, 'The Mirror Maze' -

"A function of free speech under our system of government is to INVITE DISPUTE. It may indeed best serve its high purposes when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea."

- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas -

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could easily defeat us all."

- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas -

"Those who suppress Freedom always do so in the name of Law and Order."

- John Lindsay -

Freedom is not an individual effort. Yours comes only if you grant others theirs.

I repeat -- shame on you. All of you.

Erm...there are plenty of venues for anonymous speech. Juicy just happens to be used primarily for calling other students (by name) sluts and whores, and accusing them of having any number of venereal diseases. There's no discussion, just mudslinging of a particularly nasty variety. And of course, the Women's Center has been using that anonymity to make the site impossible to use by spamming it with long feminist tracts.

No one would post an expose about racism, or blow the whistle on corruption, on JuicyCampus. That's not what the site is for. They'd come here, or anonymously e-mail the YDN, or any other of a hundred news outlets. Or even just put up posters on campus.

Did you even visit the site?

it has been decided for us so no worries

I have personally been a victim of slander on this website, and I probably have a case for IIED, but I don't think Yale should do anything about it. The most significant issue is that we are taking this so seriously. By debating this topic, and by threatening legal action, we are only legitimizing the medium. I say let it be. If you are so self-absorbed that you believe this site may hurt your chances at the 2036 election, then you probably deserve the extra anxiety over the next 28 years.

Twisting your rhetoric of free speech around to suit whatever you like doesn't make it right. Slander is wrong. Plain rudeness is wrong. This is an example of "extreme individualism," and if you've done your cultural anthropology reading, you'd know that's not what our constitution (ie primeval reality) meant when it was written.

You (collectively) are the leaders of tomorrow. I hope you clean up your act.

If people want to exercise their first amendment rights so badly, they should have the balls to say what they want to say, with their name attached to it.

Kids, there's a difference between your precious "free speech" and well, um, threats and harassment. Those are illegal already, and taking legal action against a site that allows anonymous threats (yes, just look at the site) to be posted is not unconstitutional. If you threaten someone in person or with your name attached to the threat (or harassment) you get punished. Same should go for online. Wow. Brush up on the Constitution, please.

harassment and threats are not, and never have been protected by the Constitution.