Op-ed "Never Forget" the value of free speech

Author: Amanda Brickell

The recent controversy surrounding the "Never Forget" posters requires that we reexamine the value of the freedom of speech on a college campus. In the United States, free speech is the rule rather than the exception. It is beneficial to allow a public exchange of ideas, even those that can cause controversy, because the free exchange of ideas allows an individual to use his or her own judgment to determine the merit of a particular argument. The censorship of an individual's speech by small groups of powerful people sets an unsettling precedent. If such a group is given the power to suppress speech in one situation, it becomes harder to stop them from censoring speech in other situations like those in which individuals criticize the group members' own interests.

Speech should only be suppressed by an authoritative body in extremely limited circumstances. The outcome of a 1969 Supreme Court case, Brandenburg v. Ohio, suggests that it is only appropriate to suppress free speech when it is likely to incite imminent lawlessness. The College Republican Club may or may not have wanted to inspire fear in the posters' viewers, but its goal was not to arouse in students the desire to immediately commit hateful or violent crimes, nor was that their effect. The danger at hand is not in allowing the members of the College Republican Club to express their views. Rather, it is in some students' desire to suppress an individual's right to speak freely. One must think carefully before asking others to take away his own liberties, even if his motivations and goals are positive.

In his argument in an article for the Opinions section of The Campus, Andrey Tolstoy urged that "the College Republican's propaganda must be censored until they have learned to use historical imagery responsibly and constructively." I, for one, do not want College administrators to take from students and professors our individual right to decide whether the College Republicans use such imagery responsibly. We must not underestimate our own capabilities, for if Middlebury is achieving its purposes, we are being educated to make exactly that kind of judgment.

That controversy even exists suggests that there is no general consensus about whether or not the College Republicans used such imagery for cruel purposes. Since professors and students do not agree, it would be impossible for the College adminstrators who would censor the posters to hold an opinion that represented the views of students and professors. Under such ambiguous circumstances, it would be particularly dangerous to surrender to College administrators our right to judge the merit of a particular argument.

Each Middlebury student should have the right to judge for himself whether the "Never Forget" posters were out of line. If College administrators had censored these posters, we would not have been able to make our own judgments on the matter. Instead, the College administrators would have made such intellectual and personal decisions on our behalf. Middlebury students should never forget how lucky we are to have the right to articulate our controversial opinions without fear of discipline or punishment from a more powerful institutional or government body.

Amanda Brickell '08 is from New York, N.Y.