Comments on Quick Takes: Sudden Leave at Southern Illinois, Claremont McKenna and Lafayette Add Aid, Another Cartoon Controversy at U.Va., Payroll Snafu, St. Edward's Expands in France, Quidditch Spring Break, Bancroft Prizes, Rare Look at Morrill Act

• FAMU, another boo boo
• Posted by Martin on March 18, 2008 at 9:15am EDT

• My stars how the mighty have fallen. FAMU was once seen as the powerhouse of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the South, now it seems they can simply do no right. I know that steps are being taken to correct the problems, but they have to stay out of the media for at least six months to let the new initiatives take hold.

  It was a case of growing too large too quickly, trying to compete with Florida and Florida State, when they should have been concentrating on doing what they have traditionally done so well, educating young black minds.

  I wonder if what has happened at Fisk, FAMU, and other HBCU's is just a reflection that the United States no longer needs colleges and universities that simply hold on to the ideal that we need schools that identify themselves as HBCU's. While I would NEVER advocate these schools losing or changing their historical mission, perhaps they need to focus on diversity and building a community that better reflects the face of America today, not from a time when they were essential to the education of African-Americans. Historically these schools have been responsible for the education of countless African-Americans who would not otherwise have been college educated, and for this we should ALL be proud, but like the military colleges of old who are now being forced to accept and educate women, perhaps it's time we encourage HBCU's to focus on educating communities not demographics within communities. Just a humble opinion.

• Freedom of Speech
• Posted by Arthur Frederick Ide on March 18, 2008 at 9:45am EDT

• Freedom of speech is not chained to popular whim nor is it subject to being confined only to that which does not offend. I applaud the U of Virginia's cartoonist--as this individual has not only exercised the Constitutional right and obligation to express what the individual found fitting, and it stirs debate. Freedom of expression can be curtailed only if it leads to riots or other harmful activities, such as shouting "fire" in a crowded auditorium. Whether or not the artist decides to depict the the Virgin as having sex (or did she conceive through her ear as medieval artists conjectured?), or Jesus being a stand up comic, is no worse than the turban of Mohammad being a bomb--and both are examples of free speech. While I might be personally offended, the artist has the right to illustrate what is on the artist's mind. I can counter with an illustration of my own. And people of organized religions have long painted and printed cartoons of their affirmations which others find offensive--as was especially true at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--when Protestants had an explosion of anti-Catholic cartoons. We do not need censorship in a free society, and I hope there are many more cartoons on all aspects of life including religion so that people engage in a healthy debate. The editors of the UV paper are to be condemned for questioning free speech, and if they delete or limit such expressions, they should be removed from their posts. The same is true in Denmark or other nations where psuedo-puritans are condemning and destroying anti-Islamic cartoons and their artists. Once free speech is attacked, limited, or denied, the civiliation is in its last death throes.

• HBCU Comment
• Posted by Indigo on March 18, 2008 at 10:15am EDT

• As one who has worked and studied at both HBCUs and PWIs, I have to say that while PWIs have had a history of keeping students of color off their enrollment lists (as well as women, the poor, those without college legacy status, etc) using a variety of techniques, no such history exists at most HBCUs. In fact, I would venture to say that White students/instructors who involve themselves in the culture of HBCUs are as welcome if not more welcome than students of color who do the same at PWIs. Do I think that HBCUs are perfect...by far no! HOWEVER, few PWIs are reaching out to a wider variety of students than HBCUs across a myriad of programs. While HBCUs are vastly underfunded (as are many of the students) and the students arrive with much less knowledge of and preparation for college than their White peers, the statistics still show that HBCUs do their fair share of producing African American Bachelors, Masters and PhDs especially in the fields of Business, Science and Education. So why don't we start a debate about how we ALL can be more inclusive. HBCUs provide wide diversity without even being included in the affirmative action debate AND their rate of minority enrollment tops that of PWIs. So again, lets talk/celebrate/fund/promote the positives that we know while honing in on the negatives with tangible solutions.

• UVA Press "Freedom"
• Posted by Terry Dugas on March 18, 2008 at 10:15am EDT

• There is no “right” to free speech within the context of business. The artist has freedom of expression to draw his cartoons and display them outside of work. But every publisher has not only the “right” but the “obligation” to perform gatekeeping functions.

  You can disagree with the decisions made by the publisher. But wrapping this issue in the mantle of “freedom” provides an emotional straw man and doesn’t advance the true issue – journalism’s need to balance the obligations of business with the obligations to expose society to new, and often unpopular, ideas.

• UVA cartoons and offense
• Posted by Chuck on March 18, 2008 at 12:05pm EDT

• Here it is 2008, and still a major university's student newspaper cannot figure out that (by definition) cartoons, satire, and all matters deemed comedic WILL cause discomfort, even offense, to some readers and prompt amusement and laughter in others.

  Do they think the "Vagina Monologues" do not give offense to many men and women?

  Back in the early 1930s, an up and coming German political figure expressed the very same sentiments as our contemporary do-good campus censors when he warned, "Art, literature and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting culture."

  His eerie authoritarianism is very much alive on college campuses.

• Parody and Free Speech
• Posted by Michael on March 18, 2008 at 6:45pm EDT

• One of the purposes of student newspapers, it always seemed to me, is to give writers and cartoonists the opportunity to offend others in the name of sophomoric humor. Another purpose is to allow the offended to share their views and perhaps enlighten some students about what they find offensive and why.

  I wrote some bad satire for a student newspaper in my youth and provoking a response was both part of the fun and part of the education. I would hate for college newspapers to become too censorious on pages clearly devoted to nonsense rather than news.

• Tax payer funded newspaper
• Posted by Too much on March 19, 2008 at 5:20am EDT

• Ya know, there is a line in everything. This is not a free speech issue. That newspaper is taxpayer funded at a government owned and operated institution. There is nothing free about it. What about taste, civility, tolerance, etc. Jesus telling Mary she is F***ed is none of the above, nor does it promote debate on any type of religious issue. That kind of crap is meant purely to incite and offend. Grow up.

• Freedom of Speech
• Posted by Denise on March 19, 2008 at 8:20am EDT

• Of course the UVA newspaper's intention was to offend, how else would it have gotten the attention that it did. We are all caught up in this You Tube mentality that has no particular point but to be noticed. And because we have such short attention spans one must resort to more and more uncivilized behavior in order to achieve that goal. We are finally becoming a nation of "Noble Savages"...what we have been shooting for over the last century. If we keep going down this path, pretty soon we will have arrived!

  Here is a good political cartoon. How about a picture of a church with it's hands tied behind it's back and Old Main from U.S. University throwing soccer punches at it. And the title can be "Freedom of Speech".