FIRE Fires Back at Pomona's Darren Mooko Ridiculous Statement on Free Speech

FIRE's Samantha Harris took to task Darren Mooko after the Queer Resource Center complained that one of its flyers was moved repeatedly. Oh no! Gasp! This clearly warranted an email to the entire student body for something that happened at CGU.

Of course, curiously, no administrator seemed to care about The Advocate (the pro-life mag, not the homosexual one) getting ripped up last year. I guess some speech is better than others, which, to FIRE's credit, is what FIRE criticizes Darren Mooko for doing in his statement to The Student Life where he essentially says, "Sure, we love free speech, just not hostile speech, which, by the way, we retain the right to defend."

I quote from FIRE's press release:

TSL interviewed Darren Mooko, the Pomona administrator who sent the e-mail, and his apparent misunderstanding of what constitutes free speech is troubling. On the one hand, Mooko seems to grasp that not all offensive speech can be subject to disciplinary action; he tells TSL that "Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from offense. You don't have the right to not be offended." So far, so good, but here's where things get sticky:

"The one word we always drill down to is ‘hostility,'" Mooko said. Many offensive incidents occur, but only some of them are hostile to a group or person because of his or her identity.

So offensive speech is permissible, so long as it is not due to hostility on the part of the speaker?

Unfortunately for Pomona—which, although private, is bound by California law binding private non-sectarian institutions to the free speech protections of the California Constitution and the First Amendment—this assertion is categorically untrue. Unless speech falls within one of the narrow categories unprotected by the First Amendment—such as harassment, true threats, or obscenity, as those terms are defined by law—it is protected regardless of the speaker's motive.

There is no question that administrators like Mooko are well-intentioned in their desire to make college a comfortable and welcoming experience for students of all backgrounds. But taking official action every time someone makes an off-color or otherwise offensive joke or comment on campus has a chilling effect on free expression across the Claremont Colleges. What's more, it does nothing to prepare students for life outside of the relatively sheltered college environment, where no one is going to step in if one encounters a graffiti penis or a crass comment about a political candidate.

Election Night at the Ath!

I would say let's take a shot for every Senate seat we pickup, but I don't want anyone to die. I'm saying 70+ seats in the House and the Republicans narrowly winning the Senate.

It will definitely make up for 2008 when I was mistreated by a classmate for celebrating, ruefully, drunkenly, and sarcastically, Prop. 8 (on purely democratic grounds) -- the only (partial) victory of '08.

So we're clear -- and I'm not quoted out of context -- if the homosexual marriage side wants to make it legal through the ballot initiative process, I'll vote for it, but not if it is decided by unelected judges. I'm all about New Hampshire's approach, not so much about Massachusetts's approach.

The Forum Presents: Election Night at the Ath

By The Forum | October 21, 2010 at 4:42 pm | Events | 0 Comments | Share| Print

 

Election Night at the Ath

November 2, 2010
Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum
Reception, 5:00 pm; Dinner, 6:00 pm

Come one, come all: election night is here. Will Republicans take the House or the Senate? Can the Democrats rally and defend their majority? Who will be California’s next governor? These questions, and more, will be answered as the drama of another American election cycle comes to a close.
Join the Forum editors, Claremont McKenna College faculty, your fellow students, and the infamous comment board for a special reception and evening while watching the election returns pour in from all over the nation.
Featuring:

• Live coverage of the election brought to you by a cable news channel (TBD by a vote)
• Live message board for real-time commentary and instant text message polling during commercial breaks
• A special Athenaeum dinner menu, inspired by American cuisine
• Election prediction contests – accurate analysts win special Forum prizes!
• Interact with election experts and other interested students

Pitzer Prof Says We're A Bunch of Racists, Nativists

Yesterday Pitzer Professor Adrian Pantoja gave a CLSA talk on the supposed "New Nativism." This talk, according to someone who sent me this, is exactly what you would think it would be. (See below)

Professor Pantoja seems to think that America, unfortunately, is still a racist country. Here's what he told The Root: "Clearly we have not gone beyond race," he says. "The idea of fearing the other, of the fear of blacks, it is going to take a long time for us to rid ourselves of those stereotypes. This fear has been perpetuated by media and these types of allegations."

Right. It's the media's fault. It wouldn't be because blacks statistically commit disproportionate numbers of crime... Must be racism! 


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ernie Mendoza <ernie_mendoza@cuc.claremont.edu>
Date: Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 8:00 AM
Subject: Last Chance to Submit Meal Card #s for Community Lunch
To:

The next CLSA Community Lunch is scheduled for tomorrow but I need to submit meal card numbers TODAY before I leave work so please email me your meal card numbers if you plan on joining us.  Open flier for all the details.

Thank you and I hope you all had a great Fall Break,

Ernestine "Ernie" Mendoza
Administrative Assistant

Chicano/Latino Student Affairs Center

757 College Way

Claremont, CA  91711

(909) 621-8044

(909) 621-8981 Fax

CLSA Has Another Event Promoting an Open Borders Agenda

From: "Ernie Mendoza" <ernie_mendoza@cuc.claremont.edu>
Date: October 20, 2010 12:29:03 PDT
Subject: Film Screening

Also scheduled for tomorrow (besides the Community Lunch at noon time) is the screening of the documentary “The 800 Mile Wall.”  Hope you can make it. Open flier for time and place.

Thank you,

Ernestine "Ernie" Mendoza
Administrative Assistant

Chicano/Latino Student Affairs Center

757 College Way

Claremont, CA  91711

(909) 621-8044

(909) 621-8981 Fax

I'm not in favor of the wall only -- and I have never met anyone who is. To suggest that that's all our immigration policy would be in a post-fence era, as the trailer for "800 Mile Wall" is to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the politics of immigration are really all about.

A Little Soft-Headed On Helmets, Or What Katz Misses

My friend, Ariel Katz CMC '13, asks why it is that so few students on campus wear helmets. (This doesn't sound too libertarian to me, which is what she says she is, but whatever. I've long learned that there is pretty much one real college libertarian: Bryce Gerard.)
 
Harry Jaffa, professor emeritus of Claremont McKenna and one-time cyclist coach, told me that he used to throw people off the team if he saw them riding around without a helmet. He told me this after I had biked to his work place for a seminar day after day, without a helmet. (Boy, did I feel as if I was a philistine in church at that moment...)

Kevin Burke CMC '11 points to a few studies that show that mandatory helmet laws don't really do much to reduce fatalities. He's right, but let me add some fuel to his argument by pointing to some things that Ariel might have missed.

By way of introduction, allow me to say that this is something of a passion of mine. You see traffic policy tends to be one of my few obsessions (perhaps because I have neither a car, nor a license, I've been fascinated by it...) Anyways, the best book on this subject, Traffic, and here are some interesting things on cyclists and it makes me feel far less guilty about refusing to wear a helmet. I bike to and from work, to class, and just about wherever else I can't convince my girlfriend or my friends to drive me.(I bike because it's cheap...)

Anyways, here are the salient points.

• The most dangerous places for cyclists are intersections which we don't have too much of on campus. 

• In one study, "[w]hen [a subject] wore a helmet, vehicles tended to pass closer than when he did not wear a helmet." After a long passage or two, the speculation was that by wearing a helmet, the cyclist looks less human and therefore cars don't treat him as such. 

• It's also not clear that bicycle lanes are such a good policy. As Vanderbilt, the author of Traffic points out: "...several studies in different countries have found that drivers tend to give cyclists more space as they pass when they are on a street without a bicycle lane. The white marking seems to work as a subliminal signal to drivers that they need to act less cautiously--that it's the edge of the lane, and not the cyclist, they need to worry about. (This suggests that no bicycle lanes are better for cyclists than insufficiently wide bicycle lanes.)"

Here's what we could use a lot more of on campus, though: Spots to park bikes!