Crossing Wesleyan University’s campus usually requires walking over colorful messages chalked on the ground. They can be as innocent as meeting announcements, but in a growing number of cases the language is meant to shock. It’s not uncommon, for instance, to see lewd references to professors’ ual preferences scrawled across a path or the mention of the word "Nig" that African-American students say make them feel uncomfortable.
In response, officials and students at schools are now debating ways to lead their communities away from forms of expression that offend or harass (侵扰). In the process, they’re putting up against the difficulties of regulating speech at institutions that pride themselves on fostering open debate.
Mr. Bennet of Wesleyan says he had gotten used to seeing occasional chalkings filled with four-letter words. Campus tradition made any horizontal suce not attached to a building a potential billboard. But when chalkings began taking on a more threatening and lewd tone, Bennet decided to act. "This is not acceptable in a workplace and not acceptable in an institution of higher learning," Bennet says. For now, Bennet is seeking input about what kind of message-posting policy the school should adopt. The student assembly recently passed a resolution saying the "right to speech comes with implicit responsibilities to respect community standards".
Other public universities have confronted problems this year while considering various ways of regulating where students can express themselves. At Harvard Law School, the recent controversy was more linked to the academic setting. Minority students there are seeking to curb what they consider harassing speech in the wake of a series of incidents last spring.
At a meeting held by the "Committee on Healthy Diversity" last week, the school’s Black Law Students Association endorsed a policy targeting discriminatory harassment. It would trigger a review by school officials if there were charges of "severe or pervasive conduct" by students or faculty. The policy would cover harassment based on, but not limited to, factors such as race, religion, creed, ual orientation, national origin, and ethnicity (种族划分).
Boston attorney Harvey Silverglate, says other schools have adopted similar harassment policies that are actually speech codes, punishing students for raising certain ideas. "Restricting students from saying anything that would be perceived as very unpleasant by another student continues uninterrupted," says Silverglate, who attended the Harvard Law town meeting last week.
What is the typical scene found in the campus of Wesleyan University