Free Speech on Public Colleges

Thanks to Romanii for the debate. I. IntroSticks and stone may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. I wonder how many of us heard or repeated that refrain during our childhoods. Looking back, though, I cannot agree with that neat little rhyme--it perpetuates the illusion that verbal abuse is somehow not serious. It suggest that it's the victim's fault for being the victim; obviously, they should just shrug it off because words aren't really serious, right? In this round, I will be examining the harms of certain kinds of speech in order to make the case for further restricting. Namely, I will be focusing on hate speech and privacy violations. By hate speech, I refer specifically to slurs or "communication that carries no meaning other than the expression of hatred for some group, especially in circumstances in which the communication is likely to provoke violence. " [1] I will argue that public colleges and universities ought to impose restrictions on hate speech which it becomes pervasive enough to create an environment clearly hostile to minority students. Hate speech should be prohibited in a college's research publications as well. I will also argue that campuses should take steps to prevent students from maliciously revealing the private information of fellow students. Before I launch into my arguments, I will note that colleges tend to serve various roles: they prepare students for life outside college, they produce research and generate knowledge, they foster the personal development of students as individuals, and they seek to transfer knowledge. II. Hate SpeechPicture a Hispanic student walking through campus, and being subjected to a barrage of slurs and abuses: "Sp*k! " "Go back to where you came from! " "Wetb**k! " "You should've been shot crossing the border! " Or, perhaps, the student encounters someone like white supremacist Hal Turner, who once said, "These filthy, disease ridden, two-legged bags of human debris are too stupid to believe. .. Just think, America, if we bring enough of them here, they can do for America exactly what they did for Mexico! Turn our whole country into a crime-ridden, drug infested slum. .. These people are sub-human. " [2] That kind of verbal abuse, rooted in pure hatred, is likely to harm the student in a number of ways. He or she is apt to feel less safe, to suffer emotional and psychological trauma, and to suffer in their schoolwork. This much seems straightforward on an intuitive level, but it is also borne out in empirical data. One research team conducted two experiments using Asian American University students to examine the impact racist hate speech had on them, relative to other forms of offense. The team found that "hate speech directed at ethnic targets deserves more severe punishment than other forms of offensive speech. .. Hate speech also results in more extreme emotional responses and, in the case of an Asian target, has a depressing influence on collective self-esteem. " [3] A separate study of 200 African American college students confirms that hate speech has a severe negative impact on individuals self-esteem and emotional health. [4] Other scholars have found that "Psychological responses to such stigmatization consists of feelings of humiliation, isolation, and self-hatred. Consequently, it is neither unusual nor abnormal for stigmatized individuals to feel ambivalent about their self-worth and identity. .. The psychological effects of racism may also result in mental illness and psychosomatic disease. The affected person may react by seeking escape through alcohol, drugs, or other kinds of antisocial behavior. " The source goes on to note that racist invective may contribute to physical conditions like hypertension. [10]The impact of speech of this variety is not confined to the loss of self-esteem and psychological wellbeing. In fact, loss of self-esteem and self-respect can have effects which reverberate across other areas of life. After all, "few things seem worth doing if a person has little sense of his or her own worth or no confidence in his or her abilities to execute a worthwhile life plan. " [5] It should therefore not be surprising that suicide rates correlate closely and positively with being the victim of racist verbal abuse. [6] Sometimes words do hit harder than sticks and stones. Other researchers have found links between low self-esteem and anti-social or aggressive behavior. [7, 10] In other words, it is conceivable that being verbally abused in this way is capable of indirectly increasing violence, not just by spreading hate, but also by making victims less stable. We can also conjecture that this loss of self-esteem, because of its de-motivating effects, could adversely impact school performance. "From the victim's perspective, hate messages and their stigmatization also cause long-term psychological harm. .. Feelings of isolation and aloneness are not uncommon. The psychological effects of hate messages also reinforce feelings of. .. prejudice based upon certain group memberships, causing victims to forego opportunities, to avoid certain places, to engage in self-censorship of speech, and to generally modify their behavior. .. The emotional distress. .. feelings of inferiority and disconnectedness from community. .. produced by hate messages have serious implications for our understanding of how students learn. .. The psychological well-being of a student is a prerequisite to meaningful learning experiences; to the extent that a student harbors feelings of subordination and inadequacy, learning will be impaired. " [8] "Individuals subjected to harassing environments in which hate speech exists may not be able to focus their attention on academics. They cannot grow and develop in ways typical of their peers and are forced to live in hostile communities. Students who are busy worrying about their physical and emotional safety have no time or energy to participate in university activities. " [9]It is also worth mentioning that hate speech serves no noticeable academic function, so it is not a necessary part of living in an academic institution. Furthermore, public colleges and universities ought to protect their reputations for professionalism by preventing their research publications expressing hate speech. III. PrivacyLet's talk about Milo Yiannopoulos for a minute, as odious as that my be. "In critiquing leftist criticism of the phrase 'man up,' Yiannopoulos said. .. 'I'll tell you one UW-Milwaukee student that does not need to man up. ' He then showed the student"s photo. 'Have any of you come into contact with this person? ' he asked. 'This quote unquote nonbinary trans woman forced his way into the women"s locker rooms this year. ' He went on: 'I see you don"t even read your own student media. He got into the women's room the way liberals always operate, using the government and the courts to weasel their way where they don't belong. In this case he made a Title IX complaint. Title IX is a set of rules to protect women on campus effectively. It's couched in the language of equality, but it's really about women, which under normal circumstances would be fine, except for how it's implemented. Now it is used to put men in to women's bathrooms. I have known some passing tr*nnies in my life. Tr*nnies--you"re not allowed to say that. I've known some passing tr*nnies, which is to say transgender people who pass as the gender they would like to be considered. " [10] This whole affair was broadcast live on Breibart as well. [11]Granted, Milo was not a student at the college, but had the college had a better privacy policy in place and made it a condition of being permitted to speak at the college that speakers agree to abide by this policy, this incident could've been averted, or at least the student and the school would have had some clear legal recourse against Milo after the fact. We can imagine similar kinds of gross violations of privacy, e. g. using a school newspaper to out LGBTQ students as one done at Dartmouth [12] or posting revenge porn online. For anyone who may not be aware of what revenge porn is, it is posting nude images of your ex online as a form of revenge. Victims, if they took the photos, can use copyright laws to take them down, but are in a far more vulnerable position if they did not take the photos. It is not stretch to imagine how being outted or having revenge porn of you posted online could negatively impact your life. Likely, it will cause psychological damage. It could cause estrangement from loved ones. It could result in suicide, as was the case when Tiziana Cantone killed herself as a result of revenge porn. [13] And, it could result in students being harassed once they are exposed. IV. ConclusionPublic colleges and universities have a duty to their students, to ensure their safety. Permitting actions which could jeopardize that safety--actions which could easily result in suicide, harassment, or injury--are actions which are appropriately restricted by them. Hate speech serves no academic function and can hinder the personal, academic, and health development of its victims. Egregious violations of privacy are similarly vile, and neither those violations nor hate speech generally contributes positively to the success of the victims of them. V. Sources1 - . https://definitions.uslegal.com...2 - . https://tinyurl.com...3 - . https://tinyurl.com...4 - . https://tinyurl.com...5 - . https://tinyurl.com...6 - . https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...7 - . https://tinyurl.com...8 - . https://tinyurl.com...9 - . https://tinyurl.com...10 - . https://tinyurl.com...11 - . https://tinyurl.com...12 - . https://tinyurl.com...13 - . https://tinyurl.com...Thus, I negate. Thanks to Romanii and to the judges.