First Amendment Firestorm at Tufts

Officials at Tufts University moved to uphold the first amendment after student-faculty groups tried to block racist, unsigned pieces from appearing in campus media.

It all started when The Primary Source, a conservative outlet, published "O Come All Ye Black Folk" and a piece about violence in Islam. You can guess where they were going with those. Whoever wrote the pieces didn't have the cojones to put their name or names on it.

The Committee on Student Life was understandably upset and, in the spirit of "If you are gonna talk behind someone's back, you better say it to their face," they required that The Primary Source add bylines. While their intentions were good and the Primary Source should have had the guts to add bylines, the move was censorship.

The university president, Lawrence Bacow, immediately intervened before things went too far and wrote, "Universities are places where people should have the right to freely express opinions, no matter how offensive, stupid, wrong-headed, ill-considered or unpopular."

He's absolutely right. As a result, Tufts students can still write free of a byline requirement. However, the Committee on Student Life found the Primary Source "guilty of harassment" of other students, and that decision has been upheld.

So, since we're all for protecting free speech, then we reserve the right to call the authors of the "O Come All Ye Black Folk" piece "offensive, stupid, wrong-headed," and so forth. But they do have the right to say what they want. It will be interesting to see what the students who were offended do in response - perhaps a satire called "O Come All Ye Douche Bags" would be appropriate?

Banner from the cached front page for the Primary Source.