# Another victory for free speech **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 10, 2017, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-victory-for-free-speech/801251 "2017-11-10T21:07:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2017, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-victory-for-free-speech/801251/41 "2017-11-13T05:52:35Z")
Yes, the professor shouldn’t have ruined the student’s sidewalk chalk drawings. Still, what he did was ruin the student’s sidewalk chalk drawings. That’s kind of being a real dick, you know? Ruining a child’s chalk drawings? What kind of an asshole does that? On the other hand, imagine some leftist students making chalk drawings, and some conservative guy ruined their chalk drawings. And the students cried and cried over it, and tried to get the conservative guy punished for ruining some chalk drawings. Crying over ruined sidewalk chalk drawings seems to me to be the quintessence of fragile snowflake syndrome, you know? I thought conservatives like to pretend they are a bit tougher than that, but I guess not. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2017, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-victory-for-free-speech/801251/42 "2017-11-13T07:33:31Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Yes, the professor shouldn’t have ruined the student’s sidewalk chalk drawings. > > Still, what he did was ruin the student’s sidewalk chalk drawings. That’s kind of being a real dick, you know? Ruining a child’s chalk drawings? What kind of an asshole does that? > > On the other hand, imagine some leftist students making chalk drawings, and some conservative guy ruined their chalk drawings. And the students cried and cried over it, and tried to get the conservative guy punished for ruining some chalk drawings. Crying over ruined sidewalk chalk drawings seems to me to be the quintessence of fragile snowflake syndrome, you know? I thought conservatives like to pretend they are a bit tougher than that, but I guess not. I didn’t see anyone crying. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2017, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-victory-for-free-speech/801251/43 "2017-11-13T14:13:55Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Yes, the professor shouldn’t have ruined the student’s sidewalk chalk drawings. > > Still, what he did was ruin the student’s sidewalk chalk drawings. That’s kind of being a real dick, you know? Ruining a child’s chalk drawings? What kind of an asshole does that? > > On the other hand, imagine some leftist students making chalk drawings, and some conservative guy ruined their chalk drawings. And the students cried and cried over it, and tried to get the conservative guy punished for ruining some chalk drawings. Crying over ruined sidewalk chalk drawings seems to me to be the quintessence of fragile snowflake syndrome, you know? I thought conservatives like to pretend they are a bit tougher than that, but I guess not. Is it your contention that the medium (in this case chalk) somehow diminishes the 1st amendment right of the students here? Because it sure seems like you are (emphasis added). Had it been “a drawing” devoid of political content, you might be right. But it wasn’t, and so you aren’t. Sheesh, **Lemur**. You’re better than that! ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2017, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-victory-for-free-speech/801251/44 "2017-11-13T15:09:48Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Well, first, we don’t know that they had “special permission.” It seems to me, regarding permission, that there are a few possibilities here. > > One is that the student was lying, and they did not actually have permission at all. I doubt that this is the case, but i would still be interested to know from the university whether they had granted permission. If they did, i’d also be interested to know why, given the written policies. > > If the students DID have permission, then it could simply be that, despite the written policies i’ve found, the university will generally grant student groups permission to chalk the sidewalks, as long as they ask first. That’s the practice on the campus of the CSU where i teach. To assert special treatment, you would have to show not only that the university granted permission, but that it had refused permission to other groups, and that its decisions were being made based on the content of the speech. We have nowhere near enough information to make this sort of claim. > > And finally, even if the students did NOT have permission, you are absolutely incorrect about the role of the professor here. On a university campus like this, professors’ power over students is largely limited to their interactions with the students in classrooms and other areas where official university business is taking place. Those of us on the faculty have basically no authority over the general behavior of students on the campus. > > In my classes, i can determine the syllabus, the workload, the assignments, the exams, and stuff like that. I can require students to undertake certain tasks, and i can require them to participate in certain activities, and i can even require them to be silent at certain times. If a student is disruptive to the learning environment and to the other students, i can require the student to leave the class, and call campus police if they don’t comply. > > But outside my classroom, i can’t do jack. If a student drops a piece of litter on the ground, or parks in a faculty parking space, or ride a skateboard in defiance of campus rules, i have no special authority, as a faculty member, to stop them or punish them. I can, like any other person, tell them that they’re acting like a jackass or that they’re breaking the rules, and i can, like any other person, notify the appropriate authorities. But i don’t get to play cop just because i’m a faculty member. > > If the students in this case were indeed breaking campus rules, what the professor should have done is inform them of this, and then, if they ignored him, he should have notified the appropriate campus authorities, which would most likely include the Plant Operations or the Facilities Management people, as well as the campus police. He could also have informed the Dean of Students, who is the person who often deals with disciplinary actions related to campus rules violations. And he definitely should NOT have encouraged his own students to confront the other students and start erasing their chalk. This sort of pitting students against one another is not something that we, as faculty members, are supposed to be doing. All of this, basically. It’s entirely reasonable to query whether the student genuinely had permission for something explicitly against the written rules (which they may have received or not). And regardless of whether the chalk drawings were permitted or not, the professor remains a massive dickhead for what he did and the way he did it. ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2017, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-victory-for-free-speech/801251/45 "2017-11-15T22:38:16Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Who is promoting the meme that “all college professors are lefty nuts” in your eyes? Personally, I don’t know anyone that thinks every single one of them are. It’s certainly not a claim I’ve made in this thread. Back in my day [_cough_ _wheez_] we called them YAFfers. The Young Americans for Freedom membership was nationalists and Moral Majority types (the seeds of the Tea Party, I guess) who were policing universities to call attention to professors whose lectures they deemed ‘too sympathetic to Left-Wing interests’ or ‘heretical to Christian Truth’ or similar accusations. This was during the height of the Reagan administrations _Contract with God_ or whatever they called it. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the YAFfers are still around or have resurfaced with the latest Right-Wing rise in power. –G! ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2017, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-victory-for-free-speech/801251/46 "2017-11-15T23:12:37Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Where do people go to get these stupid nut-picking local news stories written just to anger the reader? And, why do people want to read stupid nut-picking local news stories that make them angry? They quite frequently seem to come from Fox news, the New York tabloid (Post? Daily? :smack: I just saw the publications and differences delineated in another thread and can’t remember them now. ), or the UK Daily Mail. I did immediately wonder if Fox would have bothered to run the story if the professor had been disciplined for interfering with chalk art promoting something like Gun Control or LGBT Rights rather than a Right-Wing plank. Perhaps they would have run the story criticizing the artists – or would it have been “no outrage to find here!” ? –G! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-victory-for-free-speech/801251.md?page=2)