Ten months after the Primary Source's publication of its infamous Christmas carol, the campus and administration are still talking. Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser's ruling and the subsequent e-mail from President Lawrence Bacow bring a breath of fresh air and some degree of clarity to a debate which has brought considerable rancor to the Hill.
We fully support the positions of Dean Glaser and President Bacow and welcome the emphasis that the administration has placed on free speech. The decision of the Committee on Student Life to prohibit anonymous publications in the Source veered in a dangerous direction of censorship. As university students, we must be ready to hear opinions that might offend.
In revoking the penalty but not the verdict, Dean Glaser sent a message that the punishment did not fit the crime. Although we understand his position, we believe that the original guilty verdict was also in need of revision. As Bacow admitted in his e-mail communication to the Tufts community, the CSL was ill-advised to hear the case in the first place.
Dean Glaser said in an interview with the Daily that removing the penalty from the decision of the CSL reduces its ruling to a statement from the committee. However, the place for such statements and opinions lies in student publications and in public forums and not in official releases from the judicial board of the Tufts student body.
There is also another problem that begs to be addressed after last year's controversies: the official definition of harassment in the Pachyderm, Tufts' student handbook published by the Dean of Students Office, is in serious need of revision. Including "attitudes or opinions that are expressed verbally or in writing" in the school's definition of harassment is overly broad and can subject free speech to unnecessary restriction.
Making such behavior open to punishment directly contradicts a message from Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman published at the beginning of last year's edition of the Pachyderm. In his introductory letter, Dean Reitman wrote, "It is almost certain that at times each of us will feel wounded or hurt by something that another has said or one. No rules can prevent this."
We urge the administration to create a new definition of harassment which reflects Dean Reitman's sentiments. This definition should be more specific and more focused on the second part of the current one: "behavior that constitutes a threat, intimidation, psychological attack, or physical assault." Words which might be hurtful are not necessarily harassment, and offensive opinions should not be able to fall under some broad definition of the term.
It is often through responding to the most challenging views that we grow the most, and as students we must be up to task of defending our own beliefs. It might be easier to simply label the most egregiously offensive speech as harassment, but by doing so we are only limiting our opportunities to respond to those words.
