On one level, they force us as a community to ask just how compatible the educational principles Union stands for mesh with the corporate attitudes and goals increasingly pervading American education at all levels. This question in turn raises the more pragmatic but equally fundamental question of who or what actually is in chare at Union College. In a sense, these questions were answered by Dean Alford, who quite correctly informed Campus Security at the Campus Center that students have every right to distribute whatever legal information they please. While we applaud Dean Alford s actions, they were less courageous than obvious. Union is an educational institution founded on and committed to the free and disinterested dissemination of knowledge.
Free speech is fundamental to that mission.
Neither Marriott nor Campus Security nor anyone else for that matter has the right to tell any student what legal information or speech he or she can advocate or distribute, any more than the administration can or should do the same for the college s teachers. But what is particularly disturbing about this incident is that Campus Security DID silence one group of students at West College. Apparently it was an employee of Marriott itself who had called security in an attempt to silence the students opinions. The question then becomes not just whom Campus Security serves, but whether Union s basic principles are compatible with Marriott s. We again applaud Dean Alford for reaffirming what the college should be all about.