I've already posted on my proposal to boil down one 10 page section to one page of simple and precise writing. Such radical change was impractical on short notice, but I was pleased that a couple of people picked up on it. One professor said she was embarassed that the University wrote and publicized such poor writing when she's trying to teach students how to write. In particular, some people were making the argument that even though verbal harassment was only vaguely defined the relevant disciplinary committees would know what we met, and she pointed out that she is used to rejecting that argument when students tell her "you know what I mean, even though I didn't write it very well". Another brandished the University of Michigan's student code, which is only 7 pages long and written in good English (see here and here). That amazed me. I didn't know any university had the guts to write policies clearly and well.
Almost all of the discussion, however, was of what may have been the backdoor introduction of a hate speech code. I say "may have been" because the meaning of what we passed isn't completely clear. Here's the relevant section, with the most interesting parts boldfaced:
c. Discriminatory harassment is defined as: Verbal or physical conduct which
targets an individual based upon age, color, religion, disability, ethnicity, national
origin, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, or veteran's status and that:
I asked the first question. Suppose anti-war students demonstrate and say nasty
things about soldiers, in the style of the youthful John Kerry. Would this
constitute harassment, as creating an atmosphere hostile to veterans, and would
such demonstrations be banned?
(1) adversely affects a term or condition of an individual's education, employment,
housing, or participation in a university activity; or
(2) is used as the basis of a decision that adversely affects an individual's
education, employment, housing, or participation in a university activity; or
(3) has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive
environment for academic pursuits, employment, housing, or participation in University
activities.
This prompted a number of people to voice doubts about punishing mere words and propose amendments, all of which were defeated. I'm afraid much of the discussion was in the vein of "Let's just give the disciplinary committees discretion-- they'll only punish truly bad behavior," which probably would let the anti-war protesters off the hook but not those of us espousing less popular causes. I didn't say much, but I did bring up the case of Nona Gerard, just fired despite tenure at Penn State because she wrote offensive things in email to colleagues. She called people "talentless," "as cold as a dead fish," and "a rude and belittling man," which maybe doesn't fall into the discrimination categories above (is "talentless" a disability?), but the principle is the same. (Another objection to the Code is that it penalizes obnoxious behavior only to the listed categories of discrimination--- why does the University allow equally obnoxious behavior when it is motivated by something else?)
Professor Ogren did make one good remark, which was that the language above only bans conduct which "targets an individual", and thus presumably would not apply to people who are targeting an entire group. The university lawyer present also said something to this effect--that, for example, it would be permissible to demonstrate against veterans in general but maybe not to target one particular veteran with obnoxious emails. Fair enough. I just want this interpretation to be on record. I don't want anybody to say, "Well, what you said was in fact offensive to hundreds of individuals, so it is actually much worse than just targeting one individual." I've been trying to teach my students this semester to only write "individual" when they mean to distinguish groups from persons, but sloppy use of the word "individual" is common among poor writers, and they might be reading the Code.
Again, for the record: the Herald-Times story ($) notes:
"But others said the code restricts only harassing behavior aimed at individuals -- not
statements of opinion, however offensive, about groups or issues."
We ran out of time, of course, even though the Code had numerous other problems.
Someone called the question, and the great majority of members voted to end debate
(probably not realizing what they were doing-- we are not people knowledgeable in
parliamentary procedure, though I was impressed that Chancellor Gros Louis knew and
cared that a friendly amendment requires the agreement not just of the mover but of the
seconder). I had hoped to propose an amendment to remove one of the new additions, a
requirement that when a professor disciplines a student for cheating (by, for example,
giving him a zero on that quiz) he notify not just the Dean of Students, as at present,
but also his chairman and dean. The committee quaintly explained that this was at the
request of the administrators. I have no doubt that this is true and they like getting
copies of paperwork, but imposing an extra paperwork burden on professors is just going
to further deter them from reporting cheating. At present, there is a huge amount of
cheating, most of it is not caught, and only a small amount of that which is caught
gets reported to the Dean of Students. Thus, repeated cheaters don't have a rap sheet.
The amount reported would decline further with the new rule if anybody knew what
the rules were, but perhaps it won't make any difference since the faculty generally
doesn't know the rules anyway. The amendment helps bring perceptions closer to reality,
since the perception now is that the process is more cumbersome than it really is.
The new Code passed by an alphabetical roll call vote of 28 in favor to 1 opposed, with 14 abstentions. You can perhaps guess who the "No" vote was, but I rather think that some of the abstentions might have been "No's" had "Rasmusen" come earlier in the alphabet. Hoosiers are shy about dissenting.
Ex ante, though, I don't know that I would have wanted to vote first. I am the only conservative on the BFC, I think, and while many people were clearly troubled by the speech restriction, it was reasonable to suppose that my "No" vote might deter some people from voting "No" or abstaining because they'd assume my position must be the opposite of what they believe. That's one reason I held back during the discussion and amendments.
Another feature of the process is interesting. As I said, the bulk of the discussion was on the section quoted above. But that section wasn't in the draft in the first reading, and, in fact, was only emailed to us the day before the vote. It replaced the following very different language proposed in the first reading:
c. Harassment is further defined to include any behavior,
physical or verbal, that victimizes or stigmatizes an
individual on the basis of age, color, disability, ethnicity,
gender, marital status, national origin, race, religion, sexual
orientation, or veteran status and involves any of the
following:
The first proposal would not have been controversial, I think, because it only banned
the "express
or implied threat to interfere" instead of words that have "the purpose or effect of
creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment". I didn't notice the new
wording (which actually was embedded in other, unimportant words that I haven't quoted)
in the 24 hours or so that we had it before the meeting for the vote-- it only struck me
when I sat down at the meeting and re-read the new amendments.
(1) The use of physical force or violence to restrict the
freedom of action or movement of another person or
to endanger the health or safety of another person;
(2) Physical or verbal behavior that involves an express
or implied threat to interfere with an individual�s
personal safety, academic efforts, employment, or
participation in university-sponsored extracurricular
activities and causes the person to have a
reasonable apprehension that such harm is about to
occur; or
(3) Physical behavior that has the purpose or
reasonably foreseeable effect of interfering with an
individual�s personal safety, academic efforts,
employment, or participation in universitysponsored
extracurricular activities and causes the
person to have a reasonable apprehension that such
harm is about to occur.
The first version did warn us that
[PLEASE NOTE: This section is under review by
the Affirmative Action Office. New wording may be added when
the vote is taken in March.]
It isn't good form, however, to save up the most controversial part--indeed, almost the
only controversial part-- of a proposal until just before the meeting. This is
especially true when the controversial part is not flagged and its meaning is unclear.
Is this like the contract clauses in my paper, "Explaining Incomplete
Contracts as the Result of Contract-Reading Costs"?
[in full at 04.03.03a.htm . Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]
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