“You have no first amendment rights,” said Richard Dienst, Director of the Rutgers Undergraduate English Program, to Rutgers College Republican Darren Cimillo, when he dared to challenge Duke University guest speaker Susan Willis on March 8th, 2005. Willis “consider[ed] the history of the Ku Klux Klan and its relationship to current U.S. foreign policy.” Richard Dienst and English Department Chair Richard Miller called the police and physically chased Darren out of Murray Hall and onto College Avenue. A police report confirms this.
On March 10th, Justine Mertz and I confronted Mr. Dienst with a video camera and asked him a) why the English department’s procured student fees are sponsoring a highly politicized event with no relation to the subject of English Composition and b) why he doesn’t believe in the United States Constitution. He told us to take it to “judicial affairs.” The video can be viewed at www.rucenturion.com.
On March 11th, a letter written by Richard Dienst and Richard Miller was sent to Dean Kirschner of Rutgers College and Dean Stauffer of Mason Gross in what apparently was a request for disciplinary action against Justine and myself for our “misguided actions.” The letter continued, “If there is a pattern of disrupted and improper behavior…we hope that an appropriate response will be made by University officials.”
From The Alien and Sedition Acts, to the silencing of Abolitionists to the McCarthy era of the mid 20th century, throughout history this country has learned to accept the First Amendment. John Stuart Mill’s argument for unfettered free speech was simple: if one’s ideas are not constantly discussed and challenged, their ideas will become prejudices and we would be unable to explain why we believe in them. The moral philosopher would undoubtedly find it ironic that an institution as morally relative as Rutgers would begin espousing that there exists a”right and wrong” political view and way to speak. No professor or bureaucrat is omniscient or qualified enough to make such determinations. For in America, the “free marketplace of ideas,” all things compete for public acceptance without restriction, especially on college campuses where debate and discourse are needed.
But from recent events at Rutgers, it is has been established that higher learning and free speech are incompatible. Rutgers, a public university that must comply with the 14th and 1st amendments of the Constitution, has four draconian speech codes (www.speechcodes.org) that silence minority opinion and suppress speech that is vaguely deemed “offensive” or does not comply with the university’s political orthodoxy. It has also developed a resume of constitutional violations that undermine the pursuit of truth and threaten the very foundation the Academy is supposed to rest upon.
In September 2002, Rutgers violated the US constitution by banning the InterVarsity Multi-Ethnic Christian Fellowship from using campus facilities and stripped the group of university funding because it “violated anti-discrimination policies” by requiring that its leaders be committed to InterVarsity’s “basis of faith and purpose.” John Leo, a columnist from townhall.com, pointed out that after the campus sponsored witch hunt, Rutgers anti-defamation laws would require the RU Democrats to “allow a Republican president, a Jewish group to allow a Holocaust-denying president, and a Muslim group to accept a leader who believes in Christianity, animism or voodoo.” Touché.
Then on March 6th, 2005 THE CENTURION was banned from participating in Tent State University, apparently due to our views; clearly a violation of the university’s anti-discrimination policies. The organizers of TSU, an anti-war demonstration in support of state-funded education, published staff meeting minutes on their website at www.tentstate.com. Organizers of the event declared illegally “THE CENTURION as an organization is not welcome at TSU under any circumstance” and “[T]hey cannot be affiliated officially with TSU in any way.” No action taken by University officials.
On February 10th, 2005 Rutgers violated the US constitution by censoring fast-food sandwiches names, locally known as “Fat Sandwiches,” because the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered communities deemed sandwich favorites, including the Fat Bitch and the Fat Dyke “offensive.” Meanwhile, the LGBTQI (the ever expanding acronym) community has not been “offended” by Bitch Magazine (www.bitchmagazine.com), whose mission statement reads that they seek to be a “voice for feminism.” The magazine advertises its readers to “Join TeamBitch!” “Host a Bitch event!” and “Talk Bitch up on the street and on campus!” On the website, the editors of Bitch Magazine advocate taking the insult “bitch,” as a compliment, because it is another name for an “outspoken woman.” Rightfully so, but notice the contradiction.
While feminists and queer communities at Rutgers are successfully banning sandwiches and reforming language, they have been failing to recognize football players who get away with beating their girlfriends. Last semester, Rutgers Athletic Director Bob Mulcahy cleared starting defensive end Alfred Peterson to play football after he was indicted for allegedly assaulting a female student. Peterson was exonerated by a university judiciary committee before the season began, but pleaded guilty to assault charges last month. Given identical circumstances and considering the testimony he heard, Mulcahy said he would make the same decision. And where is the outcry by feminists? At a newspaper called The Medium.
Last semester, 5,000 copies of the The Medium were stolen by self-described “progressive activists,” who combated the paper’s feminist-mocking not with debate, reason, or due process, but with thievery and deception. Worse, before the crime, students of the class “Woman, Culture and Society” were required to sign a calling for a campus-wide ban. Barbara Balliet, Director of the Women’s Studies Department, disassociated the petition with the missing papers saying, “I don’t even know that they’re stolen… Do you have evidence that they’re stolen?” While women on Douglass Campus were “offended” by nude pictures of women in The Medium, the all-female staff of the of Douglass’s self-described “progressive” magazine The Caellian recently printed graphic pictures of a softball sized sphere lodged inside of a young girl’s anus. Aren’t men repugnant?
In March 2005, Rutgers violated the US constitution and academic freedoms by prohibiting The Daily Targum from investigating the University’s spending habits of a budget of more than $1.2 billion, some of which comes from our rising 9% state user taxes. John Palvik, the Chairman of the Rutgers Journalism Department, refused to allow students to make such investigations since Pavlik and his department were subject to an investigation about how student athletes receive special perks including reserved courses in communications.
Luckily there exist organizations which fight constitutional violations, such as the non-profit Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (theFIRE.org), a group dedicated to uphold freedom of speech, legal equality, due process and religious liberty on increasingly repressive campuses. Groups like InterVarsity continued to exist, but that took a lawsuit. Meanwhile, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance and Students for a Free Tibet are not required to consider for leadership students of opposing beliefs. Groups like Tent State are free to discriminate on the basis of belief, simply due to their views.
At Rutgers, a school that prides itself on “making diversity a way of life,” “diversity” is only about skin color. Freedom is given to those who have the “correct views.” The academic core values of freedom of thought and expression are in danger of extinction. In the words of Charlton Heston, we must not “let America’s universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism.”
Depending on how seriously Richard Dienst’s false threats and accusations are taken, THE CENTURION may soon be victim to another of the Rutgers’ witch hunts, where constitutional rights are not a defense.
NJO: Originally printed in the March 2005 issue of The Centurion.
