P******* C********** at LU: First Amendment Failure
By: Mike Manto
As a freshman at Lehigh, the first week of real college life is marred with orientation, comprised of awkward handshakes, bizarre skits, and dozens of annoying “socialization” games. In fact, the stomping of the “Lehigh Rumble” and the screams of over caffeinated OLs continues to ring in my ears as I stroll to math class. Many an upperclassman have cringed at the thought of those few never-ending days, where you had to force a casual smile at every turn and act as if you wanted to be best friends with every other member of your class.
One particular memory during orientation has stuck with me over the past few weeks. Attending an orientation seminar with my floor mates and Gryphon, we played out a collection of skits acted out by the Gryphon and the OLs. In one of these skits, a student complained to another that, “This class is so gay.” In response, the other student was offended and explained why using “gay” in such a context is wrong. After the skit was done and the OLs were awarded their Emmys, we were told that using words like “retarded” or “gay” in casual lingo isn’t allowed.
Why has political correctness left this school so afraid to allow its students to say anything that isn’t already preapproved in a so-called “speech code”? It wasn’t just the fact that we were being told not to say “retarded” or “gay”, it was that this message took priority over plenty of other important ones. Why talk about not drinking, not doing drugs, not cursing, or not sexually harassing people, when we can just as easily talk about not saying “retarded” because someone three states over got upset when they read it on a piece of paper? It’s political correctness gone too far.
And Lehigh isn’t alone in its mission to spread conformity and appeasement throughout its student body. On August 16 of this year, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey signed a law banning the term “mentally retarded” from the state’s lexicon, replacing it with the nicer sounding, “persons with disabilities”. Does anyone see the fallibility of the logic in this new phrase? A person in a wheelchair is certainly a “person with a disability”, but at the same time that person isn’t mentally retarded. With the many problems in New Jersey, its mangled budget, its corrupt teachers unions, its ineffective local governments, the governor should not prioritize a “feel good” law?
The fact is political correctness is making a real comeback across the country, be it in government or at universities like Lehigh. “Speech codes”, as they are now called, are springing up across college campuses. Clearly, you should not spew offensive slurs or make really inappropriate comments at college, nor should you do this in the real world, but that doesn’t justify censoring college students. We should as individuals make our own decisions on what is acceptable to say around friends, in class, or in public? Why does a university have to dictate what we can and cannot say?
Let’s act out another skit. If you overhear something offensive or mildly offensive, just walk away from it. There’s no need for a higher authority – like a university – to get in the way of our right to speak freely. Sure, punish seditious or threatening speech, but leave controversial speech and casual banter alone.
Lehigh has had problems with its “speech codes” in the past. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) gave Lehigh its “red light” rating, meaning that this school has at least one policy or rule that restricts students’ freedom of speech. Plenty of arguments have broken out about the constitutionality of the issue. Lehigh’s standing as a private university enables it to limit freedom of speech as much as it likes. The constitution has no technical power on private property. Just because the university has and uses this power doesn’t make it right; it just makes it legal.
If Lehigh wants to make new students like me feel more welcome, then it shouldn’t tell us what we can say when we’ve only spent a few days on campus. When a university like Lehigh is so liberal on its social policies yet so stringent with its speech codes, then it makes me wonder who’s calling the shots and who’s making the list that says what students say is more important than what they do. It is for lack of a better word – retarded.
