THE MICHIGAN DAILY NEW STUDENT EDITION PERSPECTIVES THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1994 Page 5B .r,, ' i 1 A / n- ., , r , ! ri 1, , ," ,. r PC drive squelches free speech 'U' has history of enforcing 'correct' Q speech behavior k By JIM PINKHAM Daily Staff Reporter On college campuses political correctness often sug- gests a stifling of words or deeds that might offend some on the basis of race, gender or sexual affinity. "Worrying about what you say in class is just another part of academia today. It is certainly not a good thing, but it is only one of the craters in the landscape," said Eric Wignall of Indiana's Valparaiso University. Just ask David Goldberg, a veteran of 37 years teaching in the University's sociology department and known among his colleagues as "a liberal humanist." He took his combat- ive, non-PC style to one class too many in the fall of 1992. In an anonymous letter to the University, graduate students accused him of using illustrative data to humili- ate and harass Black students and women. "His intention was quite the contrary," said a former colleague. "He set out to show that data can be misused to come to false conclusions and showed as examples data that did this.... He had three or four people in there that were simply stupid and didn't understand what he was doing." Goldberg was kept from teaching the class until a second section taught by another professor could be added. W. Reynolds Farley, another University sociology pro- fessor, who was maligned as politically incorrect in 1988 by an unsigned letter to the Daily, said he would like to see the University take a strong stand and say that controversial issues will be discussed openly. "I doubt that we will see strong action by administrators," Farley said. Some see PCas a daunting stumbling block strewn across the path of free speech-and one that isn't getting any better. Richard Campbell, a former assistant professor of communications at the University, who once helped orga- nize a national conference on PC, admits that some people are strident, that "there are some stupid, silly codes" and that a few people may have been wrongly stifled. But, he maintains, overall "speech has never been freer." Another aspect of the PC trend concerns what is happen- ing to speech codes. No state-funded school can restrict speech within the confines of the First Amendment. Private schools "have the freedom to use whatever restrictive regulations they see fit to control student behavior, including expression." Troubled by what the University Board of Regents saw as increasing racism on campus in 1987, the University adopted the first major university conduct code to be tested in the courts. It provided for discipline of "behavior, verbal or physical, that stigmatizes an individual on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, creed, na- tional origin, age, marital status, handicap or Vietnam-era veteran status." That code was used to bring one student up on charges for claiming that homosexuality is a treatable disease and to punish another for reading an allegedly homophobic limerick to a business class. In 1989, a federal district judge struck down all parts of the code restricting speech, noting that the "apparent willingness to dilute the values of free speech is ironic in light of the University's previous statements of policy on this matter." FILE PHOT A mob of protestors snowballed this neo-Nazis group at City Hall last year. Offensive language should not be silenced By JASON S. LICHTSTEIN Daily Opinion Staff The notion that a phalanx of political correctne warriors has descended onto this University, in the for] of left-leaning feminists, '60s-inspired administratorsc racial quota hounds has captured the attention of most i this University community. True, the now-lambaste (thanks to talk-radio reactionary Rush Limbaugh) P values and PC speak are rarely discussed in a constructiv thoughtful way -now, it is even cool to call oneself anti-PC There is much good, and unfortunately, too much ba and intellectually repressive, about the PC take on cultur Political correctness, both here at the University an across the nation, can mean tolerance, open-mindednes a liberal attitude about important political and soci issues and the acceptance of others unlike oneself. How ever, as demonstrated by the incident at the University c Pennsylvania a couple of years ago in which a new Jewis student on campus yelled out of his dorm window to group of Black women: "Shut up, you buffaloes," the P movement, although liberal, tends to shun or selectivel ignore many of the core liberal notions that this nation founded upon. The student who made those comment was forced through a legal maze, initiated by his unive sity, to officially condemn statements he made on his ow volition. There can be no doubt that those under th banner of political correctness - such as socialist type on campus who tried to forcefully stop a group of neo Nazis from demonstrating near City Hall last year, pro claiming "No Free Speech for Fascists" - threaten ou most basic right, that of free speech. New students at the University beware: To be libera and active at this University does not translate into restric tions on student or faculty speech or placing limits o what is discussed in the classroom. This is the danger o what political correctness can represent. It is always bette in a University community to debate, discuss and dismis racist, sexist, antisemitic or homophobic ideas in the ligI of the public discourse, and never to silence speech tha we find offensive. This only compounds the problem. Religious faith: subtle, diverse By JASON S. LICHTSTEIN Daily Opinion Stal Religion on campus is as varied. subtle and multifaceted as a prism. Religious, or spiritually moved, indi- viduals can follow their path or prac- tice their faith in a number of different ways - from Sunday Mass at St. Mary's Student Parish, to Friday night services at Hillel, to a late Sunday prayer session at the local Zen Bud- dhist temple. Although the Univer- sity administration's religious bias is clear - students have two weeks off for Christmas, but no officially sanc- tioned holiday for Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah or Ramadan, this commu- ro nity is religiously diverse, religiously tolerant and enlightened. In Ann Arbor, neither the Campus Crusade for Christ, nor organizations under the mantle of the Christian Coalition, block access to abortion clinics or call for a theocratic Ameri- can government. Here, spiritual people pursue self- fulfillment, happiness, truth and self- s actualization at the Yoga center in m town or attend a lecture by the Dali or Lama of Tibet. More conventional n displays of religiosity abound on the d weekends, as the weekly Sabbath is C commemorated by Jews and Chris- e, tians (albeit a day or two apart). At times, someone may give you a weird d look if you tell them that you are e going to services this Friday night. d What, and miss pre-party drinking s, with the boys! But yes, thousands of al students attend worship services each - week, and some even manage the 8:3 f a.m. mass at St. Mary's. J1 One may say that religion is forced a into the closet, away from the public C eye, in Ann Arbor - a town well- y known for its social activism, historic is liberalism and disdain for conformity ts and organized religion. True, the r- Catholic church's views of women n priests and homosexuality do not sit e well with many liberals, and right- s fully so. But all in all, our city is a - respectable place for religious, and - even non-religious people, to seek r out human universal values that all of us share. To paraphrase His Holiness al the Dali Lama, religion without spiri- tuality is nothing. Or, to put it another n way, although many different denomi- f nationis and religions are practiced in r this city of 100,000 people, what unites s almost all religious people is a basic ti understanding of spiritual values, at which are the motor and engine of our lives. 1 rL The University of Michigan Library Your gateway to information and knowledge... " over 6.6 million volumes " 77,090 serial titles * computerized access to library collections through MIRLYN " our collection is ranked 6th in the nation Take advantage of these services to get a fast start on becoming a skilled library user: Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center Center helps survivors of sexual assault; promotes awareness * Academic Resource Center (ARC) * Peer Information Counseling Computers are a fact of life at the University of Michigan. 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