Even though Stanford University is private, under California’s “Leonard Law” it can’t punish students for constitutionally protected speech.
Yet that’s exactly what it did when the administration suspended the housing privileges of Sigma Alpha Epsilon for two years, according to Jason Willick, the editor-in-chief of the Stanford Political Journal.
The school’s stated justification for the suspension was sexual harassment against women – creating a “hostile environment” for female students.
Willick says, however, the frat is guilty of nothing more than “offensive jokes” at a single party:
The most disturbing joke, according to one female attendee, was, (roughly) “What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing; she’s already been told twice.” A number of women, rightfully disgusted, walked out of the party. …
The type of humor on display at the SAE party was clearly grotesque and unfunny. … But in a free society, the authorities do not police the contents of the jokes adults tell each other at parties.
The punishment against the frat “could indicate a newfound willingness on the part of Stanford’s administration to push the limits” of the 1992 Leonard’s Law, Willick says:
In this case, Stanford subjected dozens of students to the loss of housing on the basis of jokes that are clearly protected under the same First Amendment that protects animal cruelty videos, virtual child pornography, and anti-gay protests at military funerals. …
Stanford’s press release claims that the offensive jokes constituted “harassment” — the typical justification universities give for punishing offensive speech. This characterization — once again, based on the available information — seems almost entirely implausible. … It is hard to see how a handful of jokes at a single party — no matter how wildly offensive — could be considered sufficiently pervasive, or sufficiently damaging to attendees’ educational opportunities, to meet this high threshold.
And it’s not the school’s first violation of that law in the past year, he says.
h/t Peter Bonilla
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