Tyler Clementi Act a Serious Threat to Free Speech
The tragic story of Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi is well known. Last fall, it was reported that after his roommate and another student surreptitiously recorded video of him engaging in sexual activity with another man in his dorm room and streamed it onto the Internet, Clementi committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. The two students accused of this nauseating act, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, have since been criminally charged with invasion of privacy and have left Rutgers.
At times like this, one understands why there is the feeling that we should do something — anything — to prevent it from happening again. But unless we ban the Internet, webcams, or roommates, there is nothing concrete that society can do that will absolutely prevent such acts.
It doesn’t take a law or complicated harassment regulations for someone to realize that broadcasting live video of someone else’s sexual activity without their permission isn’t OK. And, of course, even without harassment regulations, what happened to Clementi was against the law in every single state, including New Jersey, and the alleged perpetrators have been charged with the appropriate felonies.
But for some people, every tragic case is an excuse to further regulate our lives and whittle away at constitutional rights.
Enter New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg and Representative Rush Holt, who introduced into the lame-duck session of Congress the “Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act of 2010.” While it didn’t come up for a vote last year, they have recently affirmed their intention to reintroduce it this year. This is unfortunate, because the “Tyler Clementi Act,” as written, will add Americans’ First Amendment rights to the list of victims of the Clementi tragedy.
The problems with the bill begins with Senator Lautenberg’s apparent confusion over what laws currently apply to college students. In a press release, Senator Lautenberg declared that “it is time for our colleges to put policies on the books that would protect students from harassment.”
Yet such policies have already been required for decades at every single college in the nation that receives federal funding (only a small handful do not) by Titles VI and IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is very difficult to believe that Senator Lautenberg and his staff don’t know this.
Indeed, as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has repeatedly determined, the vast majority of colleges maintain policies that restrict far more expression than the law requires and, in fact, violate the Constitution by prohibiting speech the First Amendment actually protects. Rutgers, Clementi’s university, is one of the colleges that maintains policies that violate students’ rights.
Lautenberg and Holt’s bill will only make this problem worse by actually requiring colleges and universities to enact policies that violate the Constitution. The Supreme Court has promulgated a precise definition of student-on-student harassment that strikes a balance between the government interests of stopping harassment and protecting freedom of speech. In Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999), the Court said that peer-on-peer harassment in the educational context must be
so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims’ educational experience, that the victim-students are effectively denied equal access to an institution’s resources and opportunities.
That’s a lot of conditions. The reason for this is that students (generally) don’t have authority over other students. When your boss is propositioning you, or making fun of your ethnicity, it’s much easier to see this as a form of harassment because of the power differential present in the situation. But among students, a formal power differential rarely exists. What might be totally inappropriate from a boss (for instance, repeated requests for dates when the boss knows that the employee is not interested) may just be an annoying fact of life when it happens among students. Therefore, the bar is purposely set higher when it comes to student-on-student harassment.
First off, has anything good ever come out of NJ?
Second, I’m all for the anti-liberty extremist to come up with new laws that limit the freedom of Americans. The sooner the better, and finally on a sunny day the people will say ‘enough.’
As to Tyler Clementi, I feel sorry for him. Maybe we ought to ban homosexuality or immigration from Asia; maybe video cameras or the YouTube? Bridges and universities would be too much?
Has anything good ever come out of New Jersey?
Chris Christie.
That gun-grabber! The serfs of NJ can keep him.
Maybe we ought to outlaw pretty people/cool kids. Just look at Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, as compared to Tyler Clementi. Is there any doubt what was going on here? If we wan’t gay, they probably would have set up a camera to catch him masturbating.
The real harrassment that does need a bill of rights is the lefty academics and professors who ride conservative students for their views, holding them up for redicule and otherwise using their power to grade and mock. Now that needs a some new rules!
“The bill also mandates that universities extend their jurisdiction in these matters to the online world, meaning that students would face discipline for their speech anywhere in the world. In order to fulfill this requirement, universities are likely to turn to Orwellian means to monitor student behavior in unprecedented ways — including full-scale monitoring of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter — in order to ward off potential lawsuits. Here’s a stock tip: there are already companies making money on programs that do just that. They must be licking their chops over the reintroduction of the bill.”
What is offensive speech? What if a Conservative speaker, such as Ann Coulter, wants to speak on a campus. What if all the left-wing groups on campus consider what she has to say as “hate-speech?” In this world we are entering, anybody can consider just about anything as being “offensive.” And to what lengths will a college stifle free speech in order to avoid a lengthy law suit?
“The two students accused of this nauseating act, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, have since been criminally charged with invasion of privacy and have left Rutgers.”
These two jerks should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including possibly harassment and stalking. And we have not even talked about the civil law suits that can be brought against these two pieces of scum. THAT would be the biggest deterrent to kids today, making these two college students examples of what would happen to you if you ever tried something like this again. We should be punishing the criminals in this case, not the Constitution and free speech, especially on the Internet.
You’ve described the way things already are on most campuses
http://www.fire.org
As Voltaire said “I don’t care who regulates speech as long as it’s me.” Of which Biden remarked “I’ll third that.”
Did Voltaire say that? Doesn’t sound familiar, but it’s good. I expect I’ll say it soon.
Not all problems have solutions. People have to grow up and realize that life is not a controlled experiment where it is guaranteed nothing will go wrong and that if it does the fabric of society should be compromised to micro-manage the most unlikely scenarios.
The idea of hate crimes is laws on top of laws on top of laws and to what effect other than to hamstring other sectors of the nation.
Preparing for potential and defending actual lawsuits is one of the biggest reasons expense associated with nearly any public venture has gone through the roof and made life in America very expensive – freedom has long been hard to come by to as we are regulated from our no-clothes lines policies to being taken to the cleaners by gov’t in home and car ownership like it’s some kind of privilege we grant ourselves. I guess that means we oppress ourselves. Owning a home almost amounts to being fined for breaking some law.
Sales taxes should be outlawed outright; it is a double tax. Thankfully not only is buying things on Amazon cheaper just because of competition, it is also an automatic 7% discount for me.
The less regulated life is the happiest life and the insurance scam that requires everybody to pay for actual car accidents they don’t have but may have and some do have is one of the biggest. “Yer takes yer chances.” is not a big buzzphrase in America since some dolt of a woman spilled coffee all over herself some 20 years ago and decided she had little to do with it even though she was a passenger in a car with both hands free.
No harm we do is ever truly our fault from slipping in the bathtub to tripping over a crack in the sidewalk to falling off a ladder; make your fellow Americans pay by raising the cost of doing business to everybody in the entire country because of juries that awarded this hapless woman money. Even the mass migrations of illegal aliens are not their fault but America’s and it comes as no surprise that an AZ rancher was successfully sued by illegal aliens for what? ILLEGAL detention. In only 6 years the guy turned in 12,000 illegal aliens on his property. Can you believe that? 12,000! How many didn’t he catch?
In the old pre-words-as-assassin days one would have said the judge who enabled the case to go forward should have been shot as a blithe comment but he was in fact shot dead by Loughner a few weeks ago. Tide soap should be abolished from targeting stains.
Apparently if you’re a moron then laws are thrust aside and what is illegal is reserved for those who don’t actually put people in harm’s way and have to deal with their stupidity and immorality. McDonald’s was successfully sued for doing exactly nothing and the AZ rancher for being mean to people who had no business in this country or on his ranch. What happened to trespassing, especially when thousands are trespassing on his ranch and million trespassing on U.S. soil?
Not at all surprisingly, Democracy Now this very week is helping promote a documentary called “Hot Coffee” that is about the McDonald’s incident and subsequent so-called “tort reform” that has followed in the wake of the incident. The connection the idiots at Democracy Now cannot or will not make is that their kind of support of the coffee cup challenged woman is what caused the tort reform corruption they so hate in the first place; duh! – you reap what you sow. Who are these people? Their motto is, “Life is very, very, very fair – not hammer and sickle fair but very fair”.
Obviously demented liberals have never read Jack Williamson’s 1947 short story, “With Folded Hands”. A wonderful short science fiction story about a society that eventually has every little thing gradually taken away from them that might cause them to harm themselves including tools. In the end, the people of that society are left with little else to do than, you guessed it, sit with folded hands.
In some ways the Williamson story can be said to be the opposite of A.E. Van Vogt’s short SF story from 5 yrs. earlier, “The Weapon Shop”, certainly in its outcome.
So some kids have the idea for a not so nice practical joke in the worst place in America for America, an actionable property like a college campus and so everyone’s education bill should go through the roof. No doubt Democracy Now will have a show supporting a new law and then a show later about the horrible effects of that new law they supported. Democracy Now should sue itself for spilling coffee all over its control panels everyday because they’re on air but not all there and isn’t that actionable in some way? Must be.
They still haven’t proven that Clementi committed suicide because of the roommates very poor decision.
And now Kucinich is suing the House’s cafeteria cuz he bit into an olive with a pit. 150 grand – wow! And he wanted to be President.
Back in days of yore, one had to be careful of such things as olives and coffee. One must be very careful of putting marbles in one’s mouth or super heated liquids in one’s crotch.
I wouldn’t even hold a Coke in my crotch with the flimsy cups they have.
Forget about Global Whatchamacallit, the meek inherited the Earth in 1990 and are wreaking havoc.
The question that should be asked every time these liberal dinosaurs come in with new laws is whether the proposed legislation would have prevented the crisis that caused the perceived need for the legislation in the first place. 90% of the time, the answer is “No.” And that being the case, when will voters realize that the freedoms we still enjoy continue to be eroded, bit by bit. There is nothing in Lautenberg’s proposed legislation that would have done one thing to prevent this very sad saga from having taken place. My heart goes out to the family. But the kids who did this were very ugly and mean. How does that go away? I think Lautenberg should have stayed in retirement, in any case.
Every once in a while, Democratic senators visit their home states just to remind the local folks what arrogance sounds like.
Democract Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico visited his home state recently. While he was there, he went on the air with Jim Villanucci of KKOB Radio in Albuquerque. “KKOB used to live under the Fairness Doctrine,” Bingaman asserted. “Yeah,” Villanucci replied. “We played music.”
It was somewhat ironic that Bingaman’s was promoting censorship of the radio while speaking on the radio, but that irony seemed to go right over his head.
Bill Press’ floundering radio show seems to be the place where Democrat senators go to say stupid things. Last week is was Senator Debbie Stabenow who wanted the Fairness Doctrine. This week it’s Senator Tom Harkin.
“…They are just shutting down progressive talk from one city after another,” Press said. “All we want is, you know, some balance on the airwaves, that’s all. You know, we’re not going to take any of the conservative voices off the airwaves, but just make sure that there are a few progressives and liberals out there, right?
“That’s why we need the Fairness Doctrine back,” Harkin responded.
We hereby propose the Congressional Fairness Doctrine. Here’s how it works. Each state gets two senators. If a state elects one stupid senator, an additional intelligent one would have to be appointed to serve simultaneously.
Only problem is New York, Massachusetts, and California would end up with four senators each.
By now you’ve probably heard that the Senate approved an amendment a few days ago to outlaw the “Fairness Doctrine.” Republican Senator Jim DeMint’s amendment passed by a comfortable margin of 87-to-11.
Although one would think it’s important to know which senators cast their votes in favor of censorship, we can’t find a single news report that calls out their names. So we’ll do it:
Bingaman (D-NM), Conrad (D-ND), Dorgan (D-ND), Feinstein (D-CA), Harkin (D-IA), Johnson (D-SD), Kerry (D-MA), Reed (D-RI), Rockefeller (D-WV), Sanders (I-VT), and Whitehouse (D-RI).
In addition, Kennedy (D-MA) did not vote, but does anyone doubt that he would have joined them Infamous Eleven had his health been up to it?
We don’t think the Democrats really want to outlaw religious broadcasters. We suspect they’d be satisfied if they could merely outlaw about seven of the Ten Commandments, pass legislation that Reverend Wright be given equal time on all current religious broadcasts, and have Obama’s inauguration officially designated as the Second Coming.
Is that too much to ask?
I personally believe that some politicians want to be, or their voters want them to be, heros, to make the bad problems go away. Unfortunately, like it has been stated, people that do wrong things simply don’t care when they do it. No amount of laws is going to make them start caring. People are always blaming others for an unfortunate circumstance or their own stupidity. It’s high time that people woke up to the joyous term responsibility. It’s about time they accept responsibility for themselves and their actions and stop trying to make a quick buck by being sue happy. Individuals need to focus on their own selves and the individuals around them (their kids being a big one..) and try to make each person’s life better and hopefully improve their actions and judgement. This will help horrific things like this from happening better than unnecessary laws.
Your freedoms end where mine begin.
I think people forget this, and expect that everything must be tailored to keep them happy.. and don’t consider the possible consequences (it’s ok to limit what someone else says, but not what they say – they might not realize until they’re being limited that whatever law they supported might not be ok).
Yet such policies have already been required for decades at every single college in the nation that receives federal funding (only a small handful do not) by Titles VI and IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is very difficult to believe that Senator Lautenberg and his staff don’t know this.
I find it quite easy to believe. Never ascribe to malice what can readily be explained by ignorance. These guys don’t even know what’s in the Constitution, that thing they swear to protect, defend and uphold.
Typical that this kind of unconstitutional assault on free speech would be sponsored by 2 dems. For a party that constantly claims to support free speech, why are they always the ones to try and destroy it.
My handle notwithstanding, does anyone believe a bill would have been introduced if the actors, as in the ones having sex, would have been heterosexuals rather than homosexuals? Again, just wondering.
No one with a shred of integrity believes it. This is another example of elevating homosexuality to superior status. If the victim were a straight white male who in Congress would even remember his name. Why have all the victims of homosexual serial killers not been memorialized in any way? Answer: because there is no narrative worth developing if it does not PROMOTE MARXISM and the death of the Judeo/Christian West.
Would the same act have been written if he were hetro?
You mean if his parents and family hadn’t known he was straight and the shame he felt when it was revealed that he was not in fact gay, like the majority of people, led him to kill himself?
Yeah. Under those circumstances probably someone would have said, “there ought to be a law”.
Frank Lautenbert is a superannuated senile old man who continues to ply his trade of evil coercision in Congress. For too long old white men like Ted Kennedy, Richard Byrd, Frank Lautenberg, John Kerry et al have been allowed to conduct the business of government. There should be a mandatory retirement age for congress in order to save us from these old men and their illusions. They are a constant threat to liberty.
A friend commented that all Senators and Congressmen should have 2 terms, one in Washington and one in prison.
It is too bad these two young people will have felonies follow them the rest of their lves. Isn’t sodomy in NJ still a punishable offence?
In homage to the Bloodhound Gange, here’re the top 10 things about New Jersey:
Um, well, that’s about it…