There is a first amendment controversy that has erupted at Wesleyan University over a column written by Bryan Stascavage, a 30-year-old student who served two tours in Iraq, penned an op-ed in the school newspaper that criticized the Black Lives Matter movement. Stascavage is a sophomore majoring in philosophy and political science at Wesleyan and staff writer for the Argus. He wrote a piece criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement — a position shared by many who view some in the movement as espousing anti-police sentiments and, as discussed on this blog, often denouncing people for declaring that “all lives matter” as racists. However, Stascavage and the editors of the college newspaper were met by a torrent of criticism and calls for funding for the newspaper to be withdrawn. To its credit, the University stood strongly with free speech. However, the editors then issued an abject apology that clearly portrayed the decision to publish Stascavage’s column as a mistake.
The controversy began with that op-ed, “Why Black Lives Matter Isn’t What You Think,” published Sept. 14 in the Wesleyan Argus. Stascavage wrote:
“It boils down to this for me: If vilification and denigration of the police force continues to be a significant portion of Black Lives Matter’s message, then I will not support the movement, I cannot support the movement. And many Americans feel the same . . . Is it worth another riot that destroys a downtown district? Another death, another massacre? At what point will Black Lives Matter go back to the drawing table and rethink how they are approaching the problem?”
Stascavage criticized those who taunted police and leaders who did not condemn such chants. He was also self-critical of himself and conservatives:
I realize that moderate conservatives need to speak up more as well. If we had, gay marriage might have been legalized years ago. Instead, I got the feeling that a lot of moderate conservatives were afraid of speaking up about the issue and being labeled as a RINO (Republican In Name Only). . . .
Kim Davis, the misguided clerk who is refusing to hand out marriage licenses, is a perfect example of this. As a conservative, it is infuriating to see one clerk in one city out of the thousands in conservative states making headlines, when the rest are handing out licenses with no issue. One clerk is making headlines and is being held up as evidence that conservatives hate homosexuality. Kim Davis generated a couple hundred supporters, a very small showing.
The result was a firestorm of condemnation and a petition that demanded the defunding of the newspaper — signed by 172 students and staff. The petition included demands that, if the newspaper is allowed to continue to be funding, the school would guarantee that all newspaper editors and writers take a mandatory “once a semester Social Justice/Diversity training” and “open spaces dedicated for marginalized groups/voices if no submissions: BLANK that states: ‘for your voice’ on the front page.”
In the meantime, the WSA member Sadasia McCutchen reportedly joined others in the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) meeting to denounce the newspaper and the university president who defended free speech during the controversy. McCuthen is described as stating “We said that Black Lives Matter is not something that can be negotiated. It’s not a maybe, it’s a fact. . . . We also noted Pres. Roth’s blog posts which is quite disgusting.”
The “disgusting” blog was actually an highly articulate and balanced statement by President Michael Roth entitled “Black Lives Matter and So Does Free Speech”. Here is part of that truly insightful blog:
Debates can raise intense emotions, but that doesn’t mean that we should demand ideological conformity because people are made uncomfortable. As members of a university community, we always have the right to respond with our own opinions, but there is no right not to be offended. We certainly have no right to harass people because we don’t like their views. Censorship diminishes true diversity of thinking; vigorous debate enlivens and instructs.
One would have thought that such a blog would give the editors of the Argus the high ground and reinforce the decision to give a conservative voice a forum on campus. Instead, editors-in-chief Rebecca Brill and Tess Morgan wrote an apology and suggested that the column should not have been printed in this fashion. Brill and Morgan should have defended the right of the writer to express his views and steadfastly kept their views (which are irrelevant) out of the column. Instead they affirm: “The opinions expressed in the op-ed do not reflect those of The Argus, and we want to affirm that as community members, we stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.”
They then kick Stascavage to the curb and declare that he misrepresented facts without specifying what those “facts” might be:
That being said, we acknowledge that the way in which the op-ed was published gave the writer’s words validity. First and foremost, we apologize for our carelessness in fact-checking. The op-ed cites inaccurate statistics and twists facts. As Wesleyan’s student newspaper, it is our responsibility to provide our readership with accurate information. We vow to raise our standards of journalism and to fact-check questionable information cited in articles, including those in the Opinion section, prior to publication.
Additionally, the piece was published without a counter-argument in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement alongside it, and this lack of balance gave too much weight to the views expressed in the op-ed. We should have addressed the unevenness of the Opinion section in Tuesday’s issue prior to publication. In the future, we will carefully consider the context in which articles are published and work to represent a wider variety of views, even if this entails holding off on publishing a particular op-ed until we have appropriate material to run with it.
The statement raises the question if every piece published from the other side will also be accompanied by a counter conservative view. Most opinion pieces create an “uneven” view. Does every column now have to have a counterpart or just columns that conflict with popular views?
In fairness to these students, it is not easy to find oneself at the epicenter of such a national controversy. They clearly are sensitive to the feelings of many in the community that their lives are devalued and feel responsible for their newspaper magnifying those feelings. However, this is not an uncommon position for editors and the coin of the journalistic realm is found in the neutrality of the newspaper.
Moroever, if Brill and Morgan are going to accuse one of their writers of twisting facts, they should explain what those facts are. The column appears to rest squarely on Stascavage’s interpretation of events and statements. That is what an opinion column does. If he has misrepresenting something, an editor needs to be clear about what was misrepresented rather than conclusory denouncing their own writer.
Rebecca Brill and Tess Morgan reads like a fawning attempt to appease a clearly anti-free speech effort by critics. The answer should have been clear. They gave space to an unpopular viewpoint but that is very function of a newspaper: to generate discourse and debate. That same space is available to opposing views. Instead, there is an effort to blame their class schedules and volunteer staff for allowing these unpopular views to be published without some undefined editorial curtailment or limitations. Instead of being proud that their paper airs sharply opposing views and does not shy from controversy, Brill and Morgan seemed to abandon both their neutrality and their responsibility in the face of an attack on their newspaper.
Universities are supposed to be free speech zones where ideas and values are expressed without fear of retaliation or censorship. What Sadasia McCutchen and others reportedly found “disgusting” is the very guarantee of academic discourse, as explained so well by President Roth. What concerns me is that these critics immediately sought to defund a newspaper for publishing views that they do not like. It is further evidence of the erosion of free speech values on our campuses and a raising intolerance for opposing views.
Fiver,
The issue is that the Founding Fathers didn’t want “these people” to have the same civil liberties as JT and DS.
more speech here….. Black Lives Matter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Max actually does believes that ‘black lives don’t matter
I don’t think this. Rather some people believe, or allege as useful political propaganda, that those who disagree with them do so because they oppose their motivating principles. It’s much easier to imagine or slander your opponents as hateful bigots than to understand a more complicated reality. When trying to win converts it presents a clearer appeal the weak-minded are susceptible to, plus it positions you as the hero of your own story.
Hi Pogo, again with the SJW? Yawn.
@Rick
Worse than insanity, it’s a deliberate lie; putting words into Turley’s mouth.
It also smells of SJW Rule 3: SJWs always project..
Meaning: Max actually does believes that ‘black lives don’t matter and that police brutality towards blacks isn’t rampant and that police lives matter more’, but the severe discomfort this thought causes him causes him to blame Turley for it.
Classic projection.
Left is the new right.
Max-1
The angle, as you infer, is that black lives don’t matter and that police brutality towards blacks isn’t rampant and that police lives matter more…
What insanity.
They gave space to an unpopular viewpoint
This is not true. Black Lives Matter held a march and a few hundred people showed up. Someone organized an All Lives Matter march and 20,000 showed up. Even within the black community “All Lives Matter” is much more popular than “Black Lives Mater”.
It’s only among the radical few percent that the views expressed in the paper are unpopular, and even there the unpopularity is only sustainable by erroneously claiming the opinion expressed includes additional unexpressed meanings.
The simple truth is these editors are part of or were intimidated by the campus radical left. Everything they publish from now on needs to be understood under this context.
“I’m at a loss for why a nationally known law professor would be taking on student-editors for apologizing for their poor editorial decision.”
Your inability to comprehend the situation is not Prof. Turley’s problem.
I’m not really seeing the problem here. Almost lost in all the smoke and histrionics is the fact that the University reacted exactly as they should have and took a firm stand with freedom of speech. And the University is the power that matters here.
So what if some students threatened to cut off funding through the student assembly? It didn’t happen. And if it did? What next? Wesleyan goes on without a school newspaper? Doubtful. More likely, even in the worst case scenario, is that the newspaper is reborn with a different editorial staff.
And the editorial staff did mess up here.
It doesn’t take a required, fairness doctrine approach on every possible issue to note that this editorial on this subject was best accompanied by a counterpoint. Perhaps multiple perspectives. This is an important issue, and the University is Wesleyan, home of some of our brightest young minds. Multiple perspectives would have been a much better way to handle the issue. But they didn’t do that. They messed up. They learned. And they apologized.
This is to be applauded.
I’m at a loss for why a nationally known law professor would be taking on student-editors for apologizing for their poor editorial decision. I’m further at a loss as to how Professor Turley, after writing extensively on the subject of police abuses of power, would feign ignorance as to the “facts” misrepresented in Mr. Stascavage’s column.
Mr. Stascavage overarching theme concerns the imaginary “War on Cops” and the accompanying rise in crime.
There is no War on Cops. Period. And those who perpetuate this myth are playing a dangerous game.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/09/10/once-again-there-is-no-war-on-cops-and-those-who-claim-otherwise-are-playing-a-dangerous-game/
No speech was censored here. Not even close. Mr. Stascage’s opinions are pretty much a cut-and-paste from any FOX News conversation on the subject. Yet the histrionic cries of imaginary censoring of conservative speech are still inserted in between endless replays of the very speech claimed to have been censored.
Is this just a warm-up for the War on Christmas?
I never understood why bent RepubliCons have a group called Log Cabin Republicans. Do they wish to suggest that Lincoln was bent. I could see why Lincoln might have a Monica around when I see photos of Lincoln’s ugly wife. But bent? So maybe the reference is not to Lincoln. I think that it is time for the bent RepubliCons to come out with a Bent Lives Matter Club.
Call the police (or BLM), this blog has been hijacked!
“The truth is this. Most of the awful actings-out of Progressive vanity on college campuses are attributable not to the “corporatism” of college life but to the professors and students. The growth of campus bureaucracy is bad indeed, carrying its own significant set of problems, but the causes of the current insane, ultra-sensitive leftist milieu that defines most colleges can be traced most directly to the classroom and those who occupy it.”
http://thefederalist.com/2015/09/25/progressives-are-the-ones-who-corporatized-universities/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=13f1fdea47-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-13f1fdea47-79248369
@Nick “KC, The SJW was a tell.”
I thought my hair was a dead giveaway.
Darren S – I’m with you on this.
Nick S – My father was also a Vietnam Vet and was over there about 5/6 years. It had interrupted his college education. When we went to pick him up at the airport in Chicago, he was cursed at, spit on and even had his life threatened. I was just a little girl but I remember it distinctly. Those people made me feel unsafe, even with my parents. I remember crying and clinging to my mother. He didn’t go to war because he wanted to, he was forced to go but treated like Vets are treated by Liberals today. It hasn’t changed and why I switched parties.
My dad went back to college and got his Masters at UK. My parents are true blue democrats, even after the trauma of being threatened by other democrats back in those days. But even as children, we realized the hypocrisy and are all republicans today.
Another story of the liberal treatment of my vet dad was, he has Agent Orange over 90% of his body and the government refused to recognize it all during Clintons presidency.
In 2000, I told my parents that my dad will get his disability 100% after Bush is elected. It wasn’t even 7 months into the Bush presidency that they gave my dad his Vet disability, as I predicted would happen.
Were they grateful for it? Heck no! He was one of those older college students and yet still a dumb democrat. lol
Who designed the shield with the clam emblems on the cross? Looking for a meaningful symbol to represent their institution the founders came up with clams. Hmmm.
Reblogged this on Fellowship of the Minds.
All lives matter; except: ______, ______, ______, ______………..
or
All lives matter; up to and including: ______, ______, ______………..
It used to be done better. One newspaper would support one person or point of view and another would take the opposite stance. There would appear on a regular basis articles and attacks, resembling boys having a rock fight where the rocks fall just short. The readers’ excitement would rise. Then a barb would score a hit and, if the readers were lucky, elicit a loss of control from the other side. Then we would go straight to court with a flurry of lawsuits based on whatever the lawyers’ imagination could muster. One type of humor would be replaced with another, in all seriousness. Or, if we were really civilized we would read about the results of the ‘duel at dawn’ that settled it all, over our morning coffee.
This blog is becoming pathetic.
KC, The SJW was a tell.