Originally published September 9, 2000
by Adam Zurn

Our culture has a nasty habit of getting its priorities backwards. This summer in Central Park during a Puerto Rican Day celebration, scores of women were attacked, doused with water, stripped, and molested. Police did nothing when notified. Adding insult to injury, local news stations ran an amateur video of the event. The film was unedited and the attackers', as well as the victims', faces were visible.

Outrage over the event centered on local news stations airing the unedited video rather than the attack itself. National Public Radio spent five minutes discussing the attack and another 15 on the ethics of showing the unedited video. This is a clear misappropriation of priorities on the part of the public.

A similar misappropriation took place here on campus last semester. A graduating columnist wrote about her dislike for special education majors. Granted, the column was tasteless and should not have run but occasional oversights in judgment do occur. However, located in the same issue, front page above the fold, was a story about the Taking Back the Night march where female marchers were confronted by verbal insults telling them to "Shut up," "Bend over," and other unmentionable comments.

We would imagine that things such as rape and domestic violence are considered inherently wrong in our culture and that there would be no toleration of such behavior. When these marchers were so strongly insulted by residents of Bard Hall, we would imagine an instant uproar would occur. Instead the uproar centered on a pointless column that people should have ignored. Again, a misappropriation of priorities on the part of the campus.

It wasn't entirely the fault of the campus. A few professors made it mandatory that students in their classes write letters to the editor. This created a lot of artificial fuss that would not have occurred if students had been allowed to make their own decisions on the issues.

Why wasn't the paper flooded with letters and irate phone calls over the jeers and vulgar insults received by the female marchers instead of a few hurt feelings over a foolish and ill-researched column? We may never know.

We tend to forget about the First Amendment when we don't like what we hear. Many people think that the First Amendment protects us from hearing something that may be offensive. It's quite the opposite, it protects a person giving them the right to say something that may be offensive.

The public has a right to speak its mind and so does the press. However, the press does have ethical obligations to uphold, and lapses in judgment do occasionally occur. All publications, including this one, will take immediate action to correct those lapses. But realize that the paper has a greater principle to uphold, the First Amendment, than the individual feelings of a few people. This may sound callous but that's democracy: majority rules and minority rights are protected.

So next time you scream censorship remember that there are greater forces at work than your own personal feelings. But at the same time, those feelings, if vocalized properly, will not fall upon deaf ears.

In closing, I leave you with this quote from The American President:

"America isn't easy. America is advance citizenship. You've got to want it bad because it's going to put up a fight. It's going to say, 'You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil standing center stage advocating at the top of his lung's that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free?' Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag, it also has to be one of its citizen's exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free."