From: bud@mtek.com (Bud Hovell)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Banned Computer Material 1992
Date: 1 Oct 92 07:32:37 GMT
Reply-To: bud@mtek.com
Organization: MTEK International, Inc.

spam@iastate.edu (mike begley) writes:

>In article <1992Sep30.182912.29524@mtek.com> bud@mtek.com writes:
>>
>>Ummm, the word "dubious" would seem to suggest that the enforcement
>>of *any* local restriction against *any* action or speech in *any*
>>academic computing environment, world-wide, is in violation of some
>>"universal principle" that supercedes any locally-conceived ideas
>>about how the owners wish to dispose the assets they are paying for.

>it's a dubious honor, trust me...  Iowa State University has been
>caught in a battle between its administration and its student for most
>of a year regarding this issue.  The materials banned at ISU
>(alt.sex*, rec.arts.erotica, and a few others) in no way violate the
>Iowa Code (see section 728) and the restrictions were placed on the
>system by the ISU computation Center administration with no input from
>students and little if any from higher administration.  A "senior
>official" personally told me that "the [ISU] computation center
>administration had no business in making legal decisions because they
>have no legal expertise".  The university administration is now caught
>in a curious bind; defend the irresponsible actions one of it

This would seem to be an easy matter: who *is* charged with making
legal judgements? Do you have a legal staff? What advice does it offer?
Lack of legal expertise is not, by the way, immediate evidence of
a wrong decision. It simply calls it into question. Whether a decision
is "irresponsible" is not within the competence of one legal innocent
to conclude about the decision of another. Has legal counsel spoken
to this issue? What did they say?

>huh...funny, I don't even read any of the newsgroups...so it wasn't
>aimed at any of my peciliar sensibilities.  Considering the state
>motto of Iowa is "Our liberties we prize and our rights we shall
>maintain", you would think that insuring freedom of expression
>would be a basic goal of the state's universities; alas, they've
>srunk from that duty.

I'm not sure that "freedom of expression" can be defended as the
end-all to be-all. It is, for example, a most curious fact that the
national press managed for months to declaim like a chorus that the
Maplethorpe material was not pornography, while simultaneously
and uniformly refusing to publish the material itself to allow the
public to judge. Perhaps because their reading public would have
concluded that it was, indeed, "pornographic"? And may have been
a whole lot less friendly to the views of those who were carried
out on their shields in defense of "freedom of expression" -- in 
this case, at the expense of the taxpayers. So far, all I know is
that some undergrad has some alleged "rights' that have alleged-
ly been infringed by an allegedly "irresponsible" decision.

Without divulging the name(s) of its creators, how about
publishing the *specific* material that led directly to the
decisions taken?

Or is it asking too much to ask to see the *evidence* itself before
being driven to agree or disagree with a conclusion that may turn
out to be not so clearly "irresponsible"?

Finally, my posting really had nothing to do with the specific case
you cite -- which may very well demonstrate that the policy-making
process is, in fact, at serious fault, and should lead to the public
hanging of anyone who had a part in it, or even happened to be in
the office the day it was made.

My larger concern is with the notion of an "enemies list" of offending
(in his eyes) institutions which, presumably, Carl believes others
should hotly pursue on his say-so for having taken decisions with which
he (and others, no doubt) strongly disagrees.

Um, on just what date *are* we celebrating Krystalnacht this year?
________________________________________________________________
bud@mtek.com ... uunet!m2xenix!mtek!bud ... bud@rigel.cs.pdx.edu
MTEK International, Inc.             Throughput Technology Corp.
Throughput!
-- 
________________________________________________________________
bud@mtek.com ... uunet!m2xenix!mtek!bud ... bud@rigel.cs.pdx.edu
MTEK International, Inc.             Throughput Technology Corp.
Throughput!