[1506] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: What we may have missed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeremy H. Brown)
Fri Oct 10 00:47:04 2003
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 00:23:24 -0400
From: "Jeremy H. Brown" <jhbrown@ai.mit.edu>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <p05010407bba9d045a31a@[18.53.1.126]>
Dean Randolph, thank you for taking the time to join in the
discussion. I'm writing to ask questions inspired by two passages
from your message:
> There is not such thing as free speech; there are consequences to
> what we say and do.
and
> From what I gather, the students involved in this incident have
> taken responsibility for their actions and are involved in the
> process of determining what that means for them. One thing I do know
> is that the discipline system has education as its primary intent;
> all of our disciplinary processes should have growth and new
> understandings as an outcome.
My questions for you are simply these:
* Is it really the case that MIT students may be subject to formal
disciplinary action on the basis of sending email that is perceived
as offensive by some portion of the MIT community, even though that
email was intended humorously, did not target individuals for abuse,
and was sent only to private mailing lists?
* Since there are evidently a number of students who did not find the
email offensive, does MIT have a plan to provide written guidelines
clearly defining the scope of offensive speech? If not, how does
MIT plan to make it possible for students to avoid accidentally
stumbling into disciplinary trouble as have the senders of the
Ghetto Party email?
* How does MIT reconcile the need for open expression and discussion
in the academy, with the institution and enforcement of a speech
code on its students?
Jeremy
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