I

find myself increasingly troubled by the posture of Syracuse University with regard to freedom of speech.  First, there was the Hill-TV fiasco; and now there is the Facebook.Com issue. 

I am a very harsh critique of mediocrity; and I think that Syracuse University has masterfully catered to mediocrity in all sorts of ways.  But freedom of speech is another matter entirely.

So the story is that about 15 or so students from a freshman writing class formed a group on Facebook.Com entitled “Clearly, Rachel doesn’t know what she is doing ever”.  No doubt they said all sorts of stupid things about this woman.  But now I am at a loss as to the difference between this and two other things: (a) These students going on endlessly about Rachel Collins to other students on campus and (b) these students filling out anonymous teaching evaluations about Rachel Collins in which they say many of the same things. 

Of course, there is surely a line to be drawn between mere expression of opinion, on the one hand, and harassment and threats, on the other.  But that would be true whether these comments appeared on Facebook.Com or were part of an on-going conversation that occurs in a dining room on campus. 

But it is not obvious that the comments were of a harassing or threatening nature.  One comment is this:

I would rather eat the hair out of the drain than go to class

Obviously, this is not a flattering statement.  But I see nothing harassing or threatening about it.  And I am rather confident that various students have expressed a similar sentiment about me. 

There are in fact many black students on campus who are utterly persuaded that I am an Uncle Tom.  They are persuaded that I care more about white students than blacks students and that my opposition to affirmative action reflects a deep inferiority complex or some form of self-hatred.  Needless to say, there is nothing flattering here, either.  But it would not occur to me to think that the University should somehow prohibit them from holding these opinions of me, or that students who posted such opinions of me on a public website should be punished. 

This is a liberal University.  By that I mean that here at Syracuse University there is one professor after another who thinks nothing of lambasting President George Bush, in the classroom, as a mere bumbling idiot.  This I believe is covered by the 1-st Amendment, and well it should be.  I also think it is highly inappropriate.  I do not make political statements in my class.  To the 2004 presidential election, I devoted a total of not more than 2 minutes to the subject.  I asked two questions: “How many are for Bush?”  “How many are for Kerry?”  That was it.  But I know that for numerous other professor felt that they had a calling to denounce Bush routinely.

Now, I realize that there is a difference between the real world and a university campus.  So I can understand wrap my mind around the reality that the exact same rules do not apply in both cases. 

Accordingly, I took the stance that the students in the Hill-TV fiasco should have been reprimanded for their silliness, without folks going on as if the entire University community was some how afloat in a moral cesspool. 

In the case of the writing course, I agree that the students were probably imprudent, because things posted on a website have a way of making the rounds.  But I do not see that the students were doing much more than what students at Syracuse University, and elsewhere, normally do: they complain about their professors, often without having legitimate grounds for doing so. 

Now, my worry that Syracuse University is becoming something of a police state lies in the fact that rules are being interpreted along the way.  There was never any reason for the students to think that posting stupid things about the instructor on Facebook.Com was a punishable action.  And even I, a rather conservative about matters, can see that the students probably did not differentiate between doing and their making diminutive remarks to one another about the instructor.  And most certainly they never thought that their instructor might peruse Facebook.Com in order to find out what her students had said about her.  But that is not the central point. 

Were the remarks absolutely unpleasant?  Absolutely.  Were the remarks threatening or harassing?  Well, not if the remarks were rather like

I would rather eat the hair out of the drain than go to class

We do know because the University is rather silent about the matter.  But I can only assume that we have been given an example of the kind comments that were indicative of the remarks that were made against the instructor.  And if that is so, then what we have is an institution that is over-stepping the proper boundaries. 

Finally, though, there is this.  If the instructor were to have accused a student of plagiarizing and the instructor presented very good evidence of this, there is a process in place that protects the student better than anything that one might imagine.  The student could not be summarily penalized by the powers that be. 

This is how I know that much of what is being said is so much nonsense.   In particular, it has nothing whatsoever to do with cultivating intellectual excellence but with a brutal exercise of power.  It is just a matter of time, I would imagine, before a tenured professor is told what she or he cannot say or write.  But by then, it may very well be too late.  For the best way to escape a police state is to avoid its construction at the outset rather than attempt to dismantle or to flee its walls once they are in place.

As I have said, perhaps the students made vicious comments the likes of which are too inappropriate to repeat.  But the sample comment we are given suggests no such thing.  Alas, it is the very character of a police state to exercise power in the name of preventing some harm that is nowhere on the horizon. 

Syracuse University is not supposed to be the Taliban.