I have some information that I want to pass along, and then I have some questions that I would like someone, anyone — maybe some intrepid reporter, or dare I suggest the administrator — to ask and answer.
A university campus is a place where a word has great value. The words “genocide,” “holocaust,” “lynching” and “abortion” are very specific words with real, very specific meanings.
Genocide means the calculated, very specific eradication of a selected group of people — usually due to race, creed or culture — performed by a government.
The Holocaust was the calculated genocide, or removal, of millions of individuals — Jews, homosexuals, mentally disabled and Romani — during World War II by the German government in an attempt to purify a race. Relatives of that atrocity live among us and do not need to see lies spread about it.
Lynchings were performed across the South for nearly a century. The individuals involved did not mean to eradicate all African-Americans. They did mean to spread fear and intimidate people. So lynching is not genocide. Relatives of those awful incidents live among us and do not need to see lies spread about it.
Abortion does not fit the definition either. Abortion is an elective medical procedure that is legal in the United States. No government is trying to eradicate all fetuses. No private group of individuals is trying to eracidate all fetuses.
Therefore, the whole project is premised on a lie; repeating the lie does not make it true. No genocide is being performed upon fetuses. And again, there are individuals who have chosen to have this legal, elective medical procedure in their lifetimes, and they do not need to see lies spread about it.
This information is an attempt to clarify a disturbing abuse of free speech perpetrated upon us over the course of the last few days.
Now, my questions are simple: Why was this patently untruthful display allowed on our campus? And if allowed, why was it not placed in the “free speech” space?
Some students have told me that it was informational and therefore was allowed within our core space. So, I wonder, if the Ku Klux Klan or Neo-Nazis come to campus to distribute their informational material, will they also be given prime real estate in the academic core of our campus?
This precedent seems to establish this placement as new policy.
Can someone get a truthful answer from the administrator who unleashed this ugly, pain-provoking and dishonest display?
Melinda Johnson
History doctoral student
I have the same question! How did this happen?
The 1st Amendment is powerful, and with great power comes great responsibility. Just as we have free speech especially in scholarly concerns, they have the right to put up such horrid, horrid, anti-intellectual, and spiritually violent stuff. The 1st Amendment also offers us, though, the right to mock, ridicule, comment, document, and generally counter their efforts.
We have free speech in America. And there is a LARGE number of people in America who do honestly believe abortion is murder. How can you honestly expect good people to sit by and be idle while something they consider murder is happening in their own country? Free speech. You believe these people are being hateful. They believe they are being honest. You disagree, and are absolutely sure that you are 100% correct, thus you want to get rid of the opinion that isn’t the same as yours. Just because you don’t like someone doesn’t mean you have the right to shut them up. Granted, listing “genocide” signs isn’t the way to do it. It’s spreading more hate, as you have already pointed out, and just because I don’t believe in abortion doesn’t mean I want to kick woman who have had it while they are down. But that still doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to protest.