Alec Ward | But for Wales?

Talking Backward | Calling for censorship profits SOUL nothing

By Alec Ward 04/28/15 10:57pm

I think it’s safe to assume that most Penn students, in the past few weeks, have seen or heard of at least one of the demonstrations staged by a student activist group which calls itself SOUL, short for Students Organizing for Unity and Liberation. The group, which seems to focus primarily on social issues related to race, has staged a number of high-visibility demonstrations, including placing a member dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes along Locust Walk and, last week, staging a mock slave auction outside the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house.

In an article covering that particular demonstration, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that the group had stated, via its Facebook page, that the demonstration was partially in response to its dissatisfaction with the University’s decision not to pursue disciplinary action against the fraternity for the well-publicized incident late last semester in which members of the Fraternity posted a holiday card featuring an inflatable black sex doll online.

As a sometime free-speech absolutist, I will defend SOUL’s right to protest whatever they like in whatever manner they like on campus, provided it remains nonviolent. It strikes me as both odd and shortsighted, however, for a group which is clearly fond of using controversial and potentially offensive imagery — Klan robes and slave auctions, for example — in their efforts to make a point to call for the University to impose punishment for the creation of images which they themselves find offensive.

When you actually consider how such a system would have to operate, it seems fairly clear that any rule which could be invoked to punish Phi Delt for offense caused by the sex doll photo could almost certainly be invoked against SOUL’s protests for the same reason. Under such a policy, a student would theoretically make a complaint to some administrative body, perhaps the Office of Student Conduct, who would then have to determine whether a reasonable person might find the conduct complained about to be offensive, and impose punishment if so. In addition to the laundry list of other problems such a hypothetical “offense rule” would cause on campus, if it was even nominally content-neutral in its application, parading down Locust in Klan robes would, in the face of a complaint, have to face a sanction at least equally severe as the publication of a sex-doll Christmas card. The only alternative, it seems to me, would be for the University to decide specifically what positions, arguments and messages it will or will not accept. Aside from that being far from a vision of a just society, it might prove rather dangerous to SOUL’s longevity should current academic fashions someday change.

There’s a wonderful moment in Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons” where, during a discussion on evil, the following exchange takes place between the cautious Thomas More and his zealous son-in-law, Will Roper:

More: What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

More’s point is that in our desire to rid the world of those things we believe to be evil, we must take care not do away with those institutions which protect us from evil ourselves and which safeguard our ability to pursue those things we believe to be good. It strikes me that, in calling for the punishment of images they find offensive, SOUL is calling for the destruction of the very rights which uphold and protect their ability to strive for the achievement of justice as they understand it. So go ahead, SOUL, protest to your heart’s content. But consider giving Phi Delt benefit of law, for your own safety’s sake if nothing else.

ALEC WARD is a College sophomore from Washington, D.C., studying history. His email address is alecward@sas.upenn.edu. “Talking Backward” appears every Wednesday.

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