A FEW weeks ago, fourth-year student Amey Adkins reported that someone had vandalized her car by scrawling a racial epithet across the hood. This ugly crime is tragic enough in and of itself, but it is particularly appalling because I have known and worked with Amey personally, so I know that it couldn't have happened to a nicer person. And so as we debate some of the issues that arise in the aftermath of this incident, we must not allow the vandal's hateful tone to pollute our discussions. Instead, we should let our civility be a model for that which we would like to see prevail in our community.
With that in mind, let's turn to the issues. In a Sept. 9 statement, Pat Lampkin, vice president for student affairs, wisely warned that we should be careful not to let our response to this incident become "self-destructive." Since the time of that statement, a slew of proposals has surfaced with the intention of combating racism and spreading understanding throughout our student population. While some of these proposals are sound, others are questionable at best. At worst, they threaten to subvert some of the principles that are essential to a liberal arts university.
Many people have vocally expressed the idea that the University ought to prosecute and punish students who express racist views or phrases. Some have even suggested that the punishment for such heresy should be nothing short of expulsion. At a meeting titled "Zero Tolerance for Ignorance," some students argued that the value of diversity should be integrated into the honor system, and that acts of racial hatred or "bias incidents" should be considered violations of the community of trust. In an interview, BSA Vice President Isaac Agbeshie-Noye advocated expulsion for any student who "violates the community of trust" by "participating in a degrading racially motivated incident." An editorial in The Declaration this week forcefully concurred, stating, "we should take every opportunity we can to send, even temporarily, some wealthy racist scion dressed in blackface back to Richmond." On the part of the administration, Lampkin seems to agree: In her Sept. 9 statement, she claimed, "The community of trust is part of who we are, and only those who value such a community belong here."
The problem with all of this is that, morally and legally speaking, our public University cannot punish people for expressing offensive, hateful or degrading sentiments. Nor does the University have any business deciding an official set of values that people must endorse under the threat of punishment.
For example, I know some people who believe that the honor system is a pretentious vestige from the long-dead era of the southern gentleman's university. These same people believe further that the "community of trust" is nothing but a pleasant fantasy with which we delude ourselves while our fellow students rampantly lie, cheat and steal around us every day. Needless to say, these acquaintances of mine don't "value" our community of trust, but I'm not about to tell them they don't "belong here" because their values are different from mine.
Lampkin, the Honor Committee and the University Judiciary Committee are all certainly allowed to express an opinion or endorse a set of values. At the same time, they may discipline students for academic fraud, theft and a number of other specific violations. But what they cannot do, as official bodies at a public institution, is to abrogate the individual rights of students as guaranteed under the federal Constitution. This includes the right for students lawfully to express their own opinions or values, no matter how horribly offensive, degrading or patently wrong we might find them to be. In a free society, and especially at a university where the life of the independent mind is paramount, unpopular values and opinions are not and must not be governed by coercive measures of discipline and punishment.
Clearly, whoever defaced Adkins' car should be found and prosecuted for the crime of vandalism. Nobody thinks that vandalism is protected speech. But the mere expression of racial epithets or other offensive words simply is not a punishable offense at a public university, nor should it be. If the majority could outlaw words or phrases that it found "offensive" or hateful, we would be in a world of trouble. Among the first forms of expression to suffer would be satire, comedy, passionate debate and both rap and rock music.
In combating racism and hatred, it is not necessary to become an enemy of free speech and free expression as guaranteed by the First Amendment. The best way to combat ignorant and hateful sentiments always has been and always will be through passionate discussion in the marketplace of ideas and the court of public opinion, not the court of law. It is at times like these, when we are confronted with what we take to be totally abhorrent words and ideas, that our commitment to free speech is truly tested. Let's not blow it.
Anthony Dick's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at adick@cavalierdaily.com.
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