COLUMN: Happily Ever After

From Jordana Horn "in Possibility," Fall '94 From Jordana Horn "in Possibility," Fall '94I learned something quite interesting in Legal Studies 101 yesterday.From Jordana Horn "in Possibility," Fall '94I learned something quite interesting in Legal Studies 101 yesterday.We were discussing the Supreme Court's 1988 decision on Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, a case whose verdict determined that a public high school principal has the right to censor the school newspaper at his or her discretion. When asked how many people feel strongly that they would champion First Amendment rights, the Steinberg-Dietrich basement lecture hall fell silent. Out of 250 or so students, two raised their hands. Admittedly, the professor qualified his question by saying we were free not to answer. But to my mind, this silence on such an important issue -- at this University in particular -- spoke volumes. Did the students not care about the question? Did it seem unimportant to them? Was it personally relevant? Were they afraid to associate themselves with the words "First Amendment," which on this campus can all too easily inspire a Joe McCarthy-esque hunt for white male bigots? From the silence that greeted the professor's question, I learned that apparently University students have learned nothing from the past year's confrontations and confiscations. I realize that, free speech or no, we are not supposed to discuss the First Amendment or its relation to the events of the past year. The "water buffalo" and paper confiscation incidents are officially finished, and the subject matter, ironically enough, has become virtually taboo. And, as we all know, people are tired of hearing about free speech at the University of Pennsylvania. People are sick of the First Amendment. In talking about it, we are doing nothing more than picking at scars of the University's wounds from its war with the national press. But while these events are 10 months behind us, it seems to me that the University and its student body haven't come too far ahead. Yes, the speech code of the University's Racial Harassment Policy has been recommended to be dropped (or kept, depending what paper you read). And the DP confiscators have long been absolved of all blame, and were not punished for their actions. I, too, want to put the animosity behind these events to rest. But we can't simply never mention them again. We can't put these events behind us if we have not learned anything from them -- and it is all too clear to me that we have not. On a recent radio show on freedom of speech on college campuses, a member of the Black Student League told an interviewer he would wholeheartedly recommend stealing newspapers to students and staff at other colleges and universities. After all, he said, we weren't punished for what we did, and the University newspaper has become more responsive to minority concerns. So it's all right, even productive to steal papers. This is the very reasoning that Interim President Claire Fagin and Interim Provost Marvin Lazerson said would not occur when they dropped the charges against those who confiscated the papers. "We have made very, very clear what the University policy is and we hope that it is a policy that every single person understands," Lazerson said on September 15 last year, adding that he wanted "to make it unambiguously clear that restriction on the free expression of ideas as in the confiscation of newspapers is wrong and intolerable." But it is "unambiguously clear" from remarks and silence alike that while students may understand that they could get in a lot of trouble for taking papers at the University, they don't understand that the ideal of free expression should be paramount in a university community. And what is worse is that, in spite of everything, students simply do not care. Of course, the University is better off in the short run forgetting about last year. After all, as children, we all liked stories that ended happily ever after. But when you grow older, you find that right and wrong are not always clearly defined, that truth and justice are not the same for all people, and that nothing really does end happily ever after. What is important, however, is how much we manage to take away from events and experiences. But, for all of our education, we haven't learned a thing. Jordana Horn is a junior Communications major from Short Hills, New Jersey and Executive Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. in Possibility appears alternate Tuesdays.