Classroom Limits on Free Speech

Recently in California, a prize winning journalism professor halted a student's speech on gay marriage, calling that student a "fascist bastard." The student has since filed a complaint and lawyered up, seeking to sue the school, discipline the professor and overturning a school ban on offensive speech. Here are some clips from the story as it has been unfolding:
From the LA Times

Student Jonathan Lopez says his professor called him a "fascist bastard" and refused to let him finish his speech against same-sex marriage during a public speaking class last November, weeks after California voters approved the ban on such unions.

When Lopez tried to find out his mark for the speech, the professor, John Matteson, allegedly told him to "ask God what your grade is," the suit says. Lopez also said the teacher threatened to have him expelled when he complained to higher-ups.

In addition to financial damages, the suit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, seeks to strike down a sexual harassment code barring students from uttering "offensive" statements. Jean-Paul Jassy, a 1st Amendment lawyer in Los Angeles, said a number of cases have explored the tension between offensive speech and the expression of religious views. Often, he said, the decision depends on the specifics of the situation.

"Free speech really thrives when people are going back and forth, disagreeing sometimes and sometimes finding things each other says offensive, but there are limits, particularly in a school setting," Jassy said after reviewing the lawsuit.

Lopez, a Los Angeles resident working toward an associate of arts degree, is described in the suit as a Christian who considers it a religious duty to share his beliefs, particularly with other students. He declined to comment. Matteson could not be reached.

Lopez is represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization based in Scottsdale, Ariz., and co-founded by evangelical leader James Dobson of Focus on the Family. The group also advised proponents of Proposition 8 and sued, unsuccessfully, to stop the release of the names and addresses of donors, who said they had been harassed during the weeks of demonstrations that followed the measure's passage.

Alliance staff counsel David J. Hacker said Lopez was a victim of religious discrimination.

"He was expressing his faith during an open-ended assignment, but when the professor disagreed with some minor things he mentioned, the professor shut him down," Hacker said. "Basically, colleges and universities should give Christian students the same rights to free expression as other students."

In the letter, Dean Allison Jones also said that two students had been "deeply offended" by Lopez's address, one of whom stated that "this student should have to pay some price for preaching hate in the classroom."

Hacker said the district's response was inadequate.

"What they didn't do was ensure this wouldn't happen to other students," he said. "The dean accused Jonathan of offending other students."

Lopez is asking for a jury trial.

OK, part of me lol'd when I read this and part of me cringed. I liked the "Ask God what your grade is" jibe. But I have wanted to yell a number of my things at my students during class, including "Fucktard," "Nincompoop," and "Knuckle dragging mouth breather." But I don't do it. There have even been situations in class where I thing the rest of the students would have agreed with calling the other student a knuckle dragging mouth breather. But you just don't do things like that, because it damages your trust with the other students. It makes it look as though you aren't in control, that you lost your temper. And students need you to be in control, pretty much above all else. So the prof here did a bad thing.

But some of the flapdoodle I'm reading on the internet about this seems to suggest that people think the 1st Amendment covers whatever you want to say. It doesn't. You can't, for example, yell "Fire!" in a theater or "Bomb!" in an airport. I've also seen some comments about how since universities are publicly funded, they should allow whatever free speech they want. That's just not how it works. (Meg's son, take note--not that he'll ever have a problem, but, you know, advise your friends.) Classrooms are considered protected areas. Most colleges have what they designate as "free speech zones" (which I have some problems with, but that's beside the point). That means that everything else that is not in this "zone" is not considered a "free speech" area. That spot of grass and concrete, usually somewhere near the student center, is where all groups regardless of agenda have to go in order to get their message across. Fred Phelps cannot simply barge into the classroom and picket around it while yelling something about God hating gays. Think of it like a job site. No one has the right to walk into the local Pizza Hut breakroom and start proselytizing people for some reason, or protesting, or delivering a speech on an upcoming Congressional vote. The 1st Amendment has limits.

But for me, even more importantly is that the classroom is like an environment that everyone has to walk into sometimes several times a week. It has an "atmosphere" in the same way that the outside has an atmosphere--sometimes it feels sunny, sometimes it feels cold and miserable. These "weather patterns" are created by the dynamic in the classroom and by the way the prof conducts things. It is supposed to be a safe place to learn. I strive for fair weather. When gay students are forced to endure speeches designed to mark them out as second class citizens, or worse, a marked people who somehow "deserve" to be punished, and the professor does nothing to stop it, that tells the LGBTQ students that such speech is tolerated with the same sense of worth as their assertions that they be treated fairly. Even when it's not a speech, but a group of students like to do wrist flips and other idiotic bodily motions when a gay person is speaking or giggle when he or she talks, and the professor does nothing about it, that tells the gay person that this sort of behavior is acceptable, and that he or she should not expect any sympathy if s/he has a problem stemming from this in the future. Not in my fucking classroom.

I view that sort of shit as akin to people making speeches that blacks are somehow less than whites. LGBTQ issues are the challenge of our century, our generations that are in power today have a responsibility to move humanity forward in this regard. I'm not saying all the other issues have been solved and so we can move on--they haven't. But our grandchildren are going to look back on Prop 8 and the way we responded to it with shame. And we should be ashamed, either for voting for it or for not putting up more of a fight about it.

Fascist Bastards.

-- Dante's Virgil

The JP of Professional Boxing

...has made his debut only recently. His name is Tyson Fury (seriously. His first name is Luke.). Yes, he was named after Mike Tyson. He comes from a family of fighters. He's only 20 years old, he's British and he's a monster of a heavyweight: 6 feet 7 or 8 or 9 inches (people who keep records can't seem to decide) and 252 pounds (or 18 stone in British stats!).

As an amateur, he had a 30-4 record with 26 knockouts. He's only had two professional fights so far, both ending in a knockout victory for him. His third fight is Feb. 28.

His trainer, Hennessey (just gotta love the names in the boxing world), thinks he's the next big thing since Lennox Lewis. Ha. We'll see about that. But the kid is big and he's got a big punch.

You will watch this YouTube, even though you're not as into boxing as I am. You will watch it because you will want to see how big this boy is. And you will watch it because the man he is fighting is boxing in a kilt. He gets popped in the kilt once, too.



He also has a blog. It has a chat function, but no one is signed up.

Get with the internet program, Tommy.

-- DV

Search Synonyms

So, occasionally when I don't want to grade or do other productive things, I trawl Google News for items about college and that sort of thing. (Or, I check Tommy Karpency news, but that's not something I tell just everybody.) Google tries to be helpful by offering other search words that may be related to what you want to read about. So, when I put in "professor," it gives me things like "plagiarism" and "Ivy league".

Why is it also giving me "noose"??

-- DV

*There are no synonyms searches for Tommy Karpency. It should probably say "get off the fucking internet. Now."

Fertility Fucknut

Yes, the title is harsh. It's how I'm feeling right now. So, by now everyone has probably heard of Nadya Suleman who gave birth to eight babies--after she had six of her own already. Her reasoning for bringing eight more people into the world at once was because of the loneliness and emptiness she felt inside.

How fucking selfish.

A recent interview revealed that Nadya Suleman has no way of caring for all of these babies on her own nor providing for them financially, since she is unemployed. So, who is picking up the slack? Her poor mom.

Mom has recently come out saying how upset she is at her daughter and the infertility doctor about the whole thing. Apparently she used fertility treatments the first time, and Nadya's family begged that doctor not to work with her again, so she went elsewhere and found one who would.

Nadya's brilliant plan is to become a reality star and support her broke self by endorsements from things like diapers, according to one news report. She also thinks she could set herself up as a "child care expert" on TV. You can clean that coffee off your computer monitors now.

The stress she has put both the family she came from and the family she created under is in my opinion borderline criminal. From the Times article:

US public reaction has been mixed: many have asked how an unemployed single mother can raise 14 children, as her first six have already strained the family budget. Angela and Ed Suleman, Nadya’s parents,bought her a two-bedroom bungalow in the suburb of Whittier in March 2007, but soon after got into debt and had to leave their own home.

They filed for bankruptcy and moved in with their daughter and grandchildren. Last week her father said he would return to his native Iraq to work as a translator and driver.

Angela Suleman, who is caring for the first six children — one of whom is autistic — while her daughter is in hospital, said yesterday that she had consulted a psychologist over Nadya’s “obsession with children”.

Nadya Suleman, who describes herself as a “professional student” living off education grants and parental money, broke up with her boyfriend before the birth of her first child seven years ago.

So, her dad's running away, basically, to deal with this situation elsewhere or to make more money and save costs, I don't know. She's living off of student grants and her mom's paycheck. But the parents lost their own home trying to help their daughter, and all she does is make more work on them, based on what, a pipe dream of being a TV star "child care expert"? She still has no clue how much she's endangered her babies from the very beginning because of her mental problems; she doesn't understand the neglect in parental attention these children are going to suffer; she doesn't appreciate how her selfishness has basically destroyed her parents' lives and will likely destroy the lives of her children. If she thinks she's getting some kind of show out of the deal when most Americans are clearly disgusted with what she did, that bubble will burst in a few more weeks.

I tell you what I'd do, if I were Nadya's mom. I'd sit her down. I'd say, you got into this, you're getting out of it. I wouldn't pay another dime towards the house or to go in Nadya's pocket. And then I'd call foster care. There is no way that Angela Suleman can raise or pay for these grandbabies. And foster care seems harsh, but I tell you what, it's probably a better life than they are currently facing. I'd leave all my contact information with foster care, in case the children wanted to look me up when they got older, and I'd probably keep tabs on them throughout their lives. But I'd relinquish the responsibility of continually bailing out Nadya from her colossal fuckups.

One question I have, though, is how the hell did Nadya Suleman pay for this fertility treatment, if she is living off of student grants? That's the big question. Maybe I should've called that doctor for my Turkish ex-buddy Z. Looks like he does it for free.

-- DV

And Now For Something Completely Different

Let's just negate all the intellectual work of the last post with some self-abasement, shall we?  As JP can attest to, I am a big fan of the boxing match.  I lurve boxing.  It's not really just about watching people hit each other, I think, because I don't really care for Ultimate Fighting.  For me, it's more about the art of fighting, I guess.  It's contained, it's all about strategy, and watching people work both mind and body together.  JP is probably snickering, because the philosophy of the whole thing is not what I'm espousing at actual matches with a beer in my hand.  That usually flows something like, "Knock the shit out of him!"  But underneath it all, it's really a very aesthetic experience for me.  Seriously.

When D/B and I get to go to a match, we usually buy tickets for the back row.  The fights we get to see are in a ballroom, so there really isn't a bad seat in the house.  Going to the back row might seem counter intuitive, but we like to stand and yell a lot, and sitting in the front doesn't really help all the people behind us.  Although I've often wondered about the weirdos (vast majority of people) who come to matches and sit there talking about god knows what while very exciting exchanges of blows are happening on the ropes at that very moment.  What the hell did they come there for?  Perhaps unsurprisingly, in spite of our efforts to tuck ourselves out of the way at most matches, we are now a recognizable feature at most fights by staff and some fighters.  People will say, "Hey, I wondered if you were going to show up."  (???)  So perhaps we've made too much of a spectacle of ourselves.  

I would like to think, actually, that the fighters know better than to get on our bad side.  Last Fight Night, I yelled, "You really don't want us to cheer against you, do you?" and apart from the chuckle the crowd had, the boxer seemed to pick up considerably after that.  We are quite the cheering squad.  The two of us have out-yelled a house of frat boys.  Good times.  Last event, my boxer crush said something about having seen/heard the two of us that night again.  (Again?)  He brings a large cheering squad of his own, so that means the two of us beat out literally a fourth of the room with our squawks.  I have no real indication of how loud we actually are, so it always surprises me.

Yes, I have a boxer crush.  I'm a huge fangrrl of Tommy Karpency, a light heavyweight boxer from Adah, PA.  As pictured below.  I got in on Tommy's 5th fight of his professional career.  If I recall correctly, Tommy dropped the guy in the first round before a minute had even passed.  Just knocked the hell right out of him.  He just turned 23 years old a few weeks ago (please don't ask me how I know), but at the time of the fight, he was probably 20 or 21.  He's currently the youngest man in the top 25 ranked US light heavyweights (he's #17).  I was really impressed by two things:  his technique and his punch.

I am also impressed that he is good looking (rare in my opinion for a boxer), and he is in the weight class that I find attractive, but that really has nothing to do with it.  Honestly.  He has an uncanny ability to size somebody up, feel them out, and get around their punches.  He knows almost immediately when someone has taken their guard down, and that's when he goes in.  It's quite fascinating to watch, really.  The first time I saw him fight, I remember thinking it was the first real fight I'd seen where I thought one of the people in the ring was a boxer.  That might sound dumb, but I don't really know how to explain it.  There is a certain sense of posture that comes with being a boxer--it's how he carries himself, it's how he gets around the ring, the way he punches.  Some people, believe it or not, look like chickens trying to take flight when they box.  Tommy looks like pure art.  Er, his boxing.  His boxing is pure art.

Then there is the punch itself.  It must be brutal.  It just drops people.  I mean, they're all in the same weight class, but that doesn't make the punches alike.  Some people have a vicious punch, they just get more power behind it.  When Tommy connects with somebody, they seriously feel it, and it's usually when he makes that first real connection on somebody that the fight "turns" and starts going his way.  They don't seem to recover.  The last fight I watched about a week or so ago was actually for a belt, the WBA Fedecentro light heavyweight title.  I'll let Eastside Boxing describe what happened:

A vicious left hook by Karpency dropped Phelps midway through the second stanza. After Phelps arose to beat the count, a two-fisted barrage by Karpency left his opponent helpless on the ropes forcing referee Mike Napple to put a halt to the bout.

Like I said, it just drops people.  They don't seem to really recover from it.  I'd love to know how it compares, but that's just getting geeky.  In his career, he's lost once and drawn once.  I watched the loss.  It was on ESPN's Friday night fights.  He was fighting Rayco Saunders, and he lost on the cards, even though Teddy Atlas had him winning the fight.  It looked about even to me, so I could see it going either way, even though I wanted Tommy to win.  But Rayco was about eleven years older than him, his alias is "WAR", used to be a drug dealer and was recently acquitted of aggravated assault, attempted homicide and reckless endangerment.  In 2005, he was supposed to be the witness against three people who had plotted to kill him, but he showed up in court wearing a skirt that said "Stop Snitching" and wouldn't cooperate with prosecutors.  LOL.  You have to lol at that.  If you want further giggles, here is his website, with forum:  link.  There are four posters and two topics so far.  But I don't think there's any shame in losing on the cards to Rayco Saunders.

Tommy's not a young Mike Tyson.  Or a young Ali.  But he's good.  He's really fucking good.  Maybe he's a young Tommy Karpency, if you get what I mean.  He's got talent.

If you wanted to see his official stats (or if you wanted a handy post about them as reference so you could find them for yourself later!), and really why wouldn't you, you can find them here:

http://www.boxrec.com/list_bouts.php?human_id=357083&cat=boxer

The ultimate goal, of course, is to see Tommy go for the #1 spot, maybe in Las Vegas or something.  Of course, that's pretty much up to him.  But it means so much more to be able to watch his career move forward.  That would be a great full circle kind of thing.  I'm getting screwed out of the next Fight Night because I'll be at the KY Derby.  But the next time I get to see Tommy box, I'll get a picture.  Because I'm that much of a fangrrl.

Good God, I love boxing.

Tommy needs his own website and forum.  There should totally be a Tommy fanpage, I'd so be all over that.  I could come up with some stupid nick to post as, like, I don't know, KentuckyKnockout or TKOhYeah or something else that's stupid.  It'd be more time to waste on the internet.  As it is, there's just his MySpace page, and hanging around on that is just...weird.

-- DV

Boxing links for the curious:  Eastside Boxing or Doghouse Boxing

The Economy & the Meaning of Higher Education

Given the current conditions of our economy, people are beginning to evaluate whether they can send their kids to college (or keep them there). And some are beginning to question what a college degree is really "worth." I have seen this affecting my own current crop of students, some of whom emailed me at the beginning of the semester asking if the university took partial payments because their parents were unexpectedly short. Others are already making plans to go back home to a community college. The crunching in of the economy is exposing the underlying beliefs we have as a culture about education. From a recent article (link):

Percell never dreamed that this is what would happen after she graduated from college. She grew up hearing that education pays. A government study once claimed that a bachelor's degree was worth $1 million over a lifetime. Even political figures like Hillary Clinton were touting the benefits of a college degree. So Percell borrowed enough money to pay about $24,000 a year to attend Rivier College in Nashua, N.H. She's about $85,000 in debt.

"I was told just to take out the loans and get the degree," she said, "because when you graduate, you're going to be able to get that good job and pay them off, no problem." But for three years, Percell has struggled to find a job with her degree in human development. And the recession has made her search even tougher. To pay the bills, she took a low-level desk job with an insurance company, doing work she says she could have done straight out of high school. When asked if going to college was worth it, she replied with an emphatic "No."

My experience as a college student and as a teacher of them now is that most students do come in thinking a college degree grants them an automatic (high paying) job offer when they're done. It doesn't. A college degree (in my opinion) was never supposed to be about automatically qualifying for a job; it was about education and training, you know, life stuff that makes you a better citizen and a better person. It teaches you ways to process and understand the world; to make sense of the way your culture works in relation to the rest of the world; to research and analyze things you're presented with; it promotes critical thinking and questioning; it gives you a richer sense of humanity (ideally) so you can help steer the decisions we make; it teaches cause and consequence, whether that's business or physics. College can help you get a job, but that's not its number one priority--and if you want to go to a university, it shouldn't be yours either. As proof of this, consider the actual number of people who work in the field they got their bachelor's degree in. (Or grad school placement rates!!!!) That figure stands at 20% on average. That means the vast majority of grads go do something in a field they don't have a degree in. This is less true for the sciences, but there is still wiggle room in that field as well.

Unfortunately, the culture we live in likes to promote the idea that universities are about jobs and education is a secondary. Statistically, as the article points out, college grads do earn more in a lifetime than high school grads do. These figures are skewed by a few super high earners; but there have been college dropouts who went on to become super earners as well (Dell computers, anyone?). But super earners are rare anyway. Regular jobs do their part to highlight a college degree. Sometimes this is warranted--other times I think it is unnecessarily trumped up. College degrees are sometimes used as excuses for holding down the wages of otherwise well qualified people ("Well, if you had a business degree, we'd pay you $10,000 more." Really? For doing the exact same job?). In hiring practices it's pretty much accepted wisdom that a college grad will get the job over an otherwise perfectly qualified high school grad. And let's not forget that college grads and those with "some college" are routinely taking over jobs that high school grads used to be able to get. From an article on labor and education (link)--the whole article is good, but it's also very long:

A 2006 paper by Andrew Sum et al, commissioned for the New Skills Commission report Tough Choices or Tough Times, acknowledges that young college graduates "have not escaped labor market problems in recent years. Fewer young college graduates have been able to obtain college labor market jobs, and their real wages and annual earnings have declined accordingly due to rising mal-employment. These young college graduates take jobs that displace their peers with lower levels of schooling."

But another piece of the problem is that sometimes universities and businesses have purposely turned the bachelor's degree into the high school diploma. Lots of students feel they can't get regular jobs without them. Some of this, I think, can be attributed to expectations from business and a misunderstanding about what universities are supposed to do. But sometimes schools and businesses work together to make sure that happens. To give an example, my mother before she retired worked as a sign language interpreter for the school system in our county. She was assigned to a few deaf children and went through the day with them as their interpreter for teachers and friends. In order to be a school interpreter, you had to pass the state exam with a certain score--the same requirement for hospital interpreters, working with the police or in court, etc. You didn't have to have a college degree. There were a lot of interpreters in the system who had graduated high school and who had deaf family members. They were incredibly skilled, because they were bilingual from birth. It was good pay for the area and an important service.

After intense lobbying by Eastern Kentucky University (shame on you, EKU!), the rules have now changed. In order to be certified for the school systems now, you not only have to pass the state exam, but you have to have a bachelor's degree in interpretation. Several people in Mom's school system have to come into compliance or be forced out of their jobs. Are they suddenly less skilled? Is it likely that a "non native" interpreter with a degree and a vocabulary learned while in college will be a better translator than someone with a lifetime's worth of vocabulary? There is one way to solve the problem if you have to come into compliance--get a degree. In the state of Kentucky, there is only one school that offers a degree in sign language: Eastern Kentucky University.

Some people don't belong in college. They would be happier in a trade school. Some people want college to be more than what it is. The girl in the article (and later another boy) complains that her professors misinterpreted the university to her. I doubt that highly. You see, we don't really talk about jobs. We're too busy teaching knowledge. Of course you're going to feel duped if that's not what you came here for. But sometimes the nature of institutions stack the deck against you. It'll be interesting to see what the economic situation means for higher education.

-- DV
**Hat tip to Mad Dog for discovering the original link and forwarding it to me for my opinion.