Thursday, October 28, 2004

Political Correctness Run Amok

The Volokh Conspiracy reports on an unfortunate case of suppression of free speech at a New England university dormitory:
The University of New Hampshire has evicted a student from housing for posting fliers in his residential hall joking that freshman women could lose the "Freshman 15" by walking up the dormitory stairs. The public university found him guilty of violating policies on affirmative action, harassment, and disorderly conduct, and has sentenced him to mandatory counseling and probation along with his eviction.

Read the whole story.

I ranted last week about the ridiculousness of people passing regulations to limit expression just because said expression might hurt someone else's feelings. The example above is even more dangerous because it appears that someone's speech was limited just because it expressed a view inconsistent with that of "the powers that be." We hear more and more about this on college campuses; I hope there's a lawyer out there who's brave enough to sue the pants off the university on this student's behalf.

The curse is lifted: As a big baseball fan, I was happy to see the Red Sox win the Series last night (Halfling and I caught the last part of the game on TV in the Syndicate during Lab Band Night). Now that the "curse of the Bambino" is no more, it'll be interesting to see how the Sox fans react to being something other than the "lovable losers" they've been for the past 86 years.

So who will shed the mantle next year? How about the Cubs and my beloved Rangers (a.k.a. Sammy Sosa vs. the team who traded him away much too early in his career)? At any rate, the only downside of last night's game is that there's no more baseball till April. Perhaps the Cowboys can start winning games again...but if not, thank goodness for UNT (another game this weekend). The upside is that, with no baseball to watch on TV, I might well practice more...maybe starting now.

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