April Fool's issues on campus

This article talks about this year's roundup of college newspapers who've gotten into hot water over April Fool's Day parody issues.



People: leave parodying to the professionals! I'm just kidding, but I can attest to how low our National Sense of Humor Reserves are at the moment. Whenever I read about another "offensive" student joke, common sense begs the question: who died? Yes, I'm familar with all the arguments about "creating a hostile environment," and occasionally even make them myself. But given the texture of our national media, I find it very hard to believe that any college newspaper could write something that hasn't been aired professionally without comment. (And within the last 24 hours, if you're watching the right cable channel.)



One might think that college campuses are bastions of free speech. They are not. They are places where a lot of people talk about free speech. But if you ask college students, most of them--like, sadly, most of the rest of us--consider free speech somewhat like free love: a nice idea, but too troublesome in the practice.



The tendency of institutions, benign or hostile, is to control their environment--that includes speech. And that's why student humor magazines--and yes, April Fool's issues of newspapers--are more important than you might think. How you react to an offensive cartoon at age 19, what you think is an appropriate level of speech-control, is a good indicator of how tolerant you'll be at age 40.



Important or not, pity the poor student humorist. Campuses are particularly difficult for the following reasons:

1) You get it from both sides. Politics on campus is controlled by hotheads looking to become famous by leading a crusade. Prepare to have people satisfy their self-images as a pundit-in-waiting by calling you a "Fascist" or "America-hater," whichever they prefer. And just because William F. Buckley Jr. Jr. graduates, you're not off the hook: they make more every year.

2) You're an easy target, an "authority" with no power. It's much easier (and less frightening) to shut down a student-run newspaper for printing a boneheaded cartoon than, say, pressure the University to increase salaries and benefits for the Jamaican-born guy who cleans up the activist's vomity bathroom. The former's fake political action; the latter's authentic change, and THAT might get a student politico expelled.

3) In America at least, being an intellectual means you can't have a sense of humor. If you can laugh at yourself--or even acknowledge that reality is an unruly place--you are less smart. "I take myself seriously, so you should, too" is the motto of campus big-wheels everywhere

4) Your intent doesn't count. Misjudging your audience--or simply not being very funny--is the same as intending to injure. Some opinions count more than others, and where you stand on the Invisible Scoreboard of Grievance does matter. Sorry.



What is particularly disturbing about these kerfuffles is that the offended students and the school administrators always get along like peas and carrots. Burning with indignation and yearning for justice, the offended students always go to the University--as if that institution didn't have its own dog in the fight. It's freaking immature, the 19-year-old equivalent of tattling on your brother or sister. But unlike your parents, a university doesn't love you; it has no inherent committment to justice; it simply wants you to pay your bills and graduate so it can start asking you for money.



Student newspapers--student publications of any kind--are an irritant. They complicate the easy flow from matriculation to graduation, and if a university can use one group of students to reign in another group of students, it will. There's usually no active value-judgment in this; I'm sure the vast majority of administrators believe in freedom of the press. But their job isn't to uphold the Constitution, it's to aid and protect the University--and that's what they do. These articles all end with the student editors all being trooped off to sensitivity training; yet there's never any requirement for the offended people to attend "free speech training." They, apparently, are perfect.



You may think I'm just ranting, but college students vote; and these attitudes have percolated up into post-collegiate life as well. College students are much too cozy with whoever's in control; It's time for them--and all of us--to drop our illusions about the nature of institutions. And it's never too early to develop a sense of priorities. In the meantime, give to the Student Press Law Center, because a printing press is a terrible thing to waste.