The Committee on Student Life (CSL) will hold a hearing today to address two complaints against The Primary Source.
One complaint comes from senior David Dennis in response to the Source's parody Christmas carol from last semester. The second comes from the Muslim Student Association (MSA) in response to an item emphasizing the hostility and violent tendencies of Muslims in the April 11 issue.
Both complaints allege that the magazine broke university policy by publishing content that constituted harassment and created a hostile environment. Both are actionable offenses, according to the Pachyderm, Tufts' student handbook. Primary Source members maintain that they were exercising their right to free speech.
The CSL, comprised of faculty members and five students, hears complaints rendered against student organizations as well as appeals from some other campus judiciaries. After a meeting two weeks ago, the committee dismissed a libel charge but decided to have a hearing on the other two.
Dennis said that he filed the complaint because no action had been taken against the carol despite student uproar and national media attention.
"We tell students there's nothing we can do because of free speech. But there is language in the Pachyderm written for this purpose [that] allows students to be able to say, 'I don't want to be harassed in a hostile environment,'" he said.
Dennis hopes that the hearing will yield "a recognition that the carol was a break in university policy," he said.
The MSA joined the case after the publication of an April 11 item in the Source saying that Islam is a violent religion. "We have to take it seriously," said junior Shirwac Mohamed, the MSA co-chair who will represent the organization at today's hearing. He said that many Muslim students, even those not normally active in MSA, have complained about the item.
"I looked at the article and was flabbergasted," he said. "It's intentionally putting a negative spin on Islam."
Because the unsigned item was made to resemble the MSA's advertisement for Islamic Awareness week, he said, it seemed as though the Tufts group in particular was being targeted. "It wasn't just an attack on Muslims, or Muslims in the Middle East, but a specific attack on students on this campus," Mohamed said. "We felt like we've been targeted. They claim free speech, but always target the same group of minorities."
Mohamed said both MSA and Pathways, an interfaith initiative at Tufts, have both repeatedly tried to contact the Source in response to the item, but have not made any headway.
Source staffers said they had received an invitation to an MSA event but no op-eds or letters to the editor.
Mohamed said that MSA students also met with university officials to talk through the complaints and that the consensus was that the group should bring its grievance forward at the same time as Dennis.
The logistics of the cases are complicated, since the current and one of the former Source editors-in-chief, sophomore Matthew Gardner-Schuster and junior Alison Hoover respectively, are CSL members. Both Hoover, who is the student chair of the CSL, and Gardner-Schuster have recused themselves from the cases.
Hoover said last night that she might testify at the hearing in a limited capacity, but she and Gardner-Schuster deferred all comments on the case to former editor-in-chief Douglas Kingman, who held the position after Hoover and before Gardner-Schuster.
"We've always had one consistent strategy as far as our freedom of speech is concerned, and that is that we engage in political speech," said Kingman, who spoke to the Daily on behalf of the Source. "That means that our speech is protected constitutionally by the First Amendment."
He said that he is confident that charges will not hold up. "All these things revolve around a certain theme of people feeling that their feelings have been hurt over things in the magazine ...We believe this is not a particularly fair argument," he said.
As in other cases, he said that he believes that the CSL will support its free speech justification. "In the end, the Source has never had a problem convincing the university of the merits of freedom of speech," he said. "We don't see why it should be any different in this instance."
It still remains unclear what range of consequences could result from the hearing if the complaints are found to have merit, as the CSL's ability to dole out sanctions is vaguely defined in the Pachyderm: "It may impose any consequences seen as appropriate against student organizations," it says.
"We'll do our best to be fair and impartial and render a judgment and make a decision that has an impact in some way," Associate Professor of Dance and Drama and CSL Chair Barbara Grossman said. "We can't say what it will be. These are big questions. It's not always easy to come down with objective and quantifiable evidence."
"Could they issue a [punishment]? Yes, they could," Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman, who also sits on the CSL, said. "But they would first have to find validation for either of the ... grievances."
Today's hearing comes after an unsuccessful attempt by Dennis to have his case heard before the Tufts Community Union Judiciary (TCUJ).
Judiciary officials decided not to hear the case because a formal complaint was not submitted until April 3, two days after filing deadline.
Sophomore and TCUJ Chair Daniel Halper recused himself from the proceedings since he is a former contributor to the Source.
Dennis, who served on the judiciary during the 2005-06 academic year, said that extensions to the deadline had been granted in the past and this year's Judiciary "stalled" the process in this particular case.
But senior and TCUJ Vice-Chair Shiva Bhashyam argued that it would be unfair to host a hearing when students are overwhelmed with work. "They had ample time before the deadline. It wasn't like he didn't have the option not to file the complaint earlier," he said.
He also emphasized that though Dennis is graduating, another student could file the same complaint next fall since the statute of limitations is one year.
But Kingman said that the complaints should not have been filed in the first place. "I don't think that's the proper way to go about feeling uncomfortable by political speech," he said, emphasizing that such concerns would best be addressed by non-legal means. "In your life you're going to come across political statements you disagree with. That happens to conservatives a lot on campus, and we do not bring all of our complaints to the CSL."
Still, Reitman said that bringing some type of resolution to the complaints will be helpful. "It would be nice to have some sense of closure about these particular complaints, and maybe this can bring some [to] this phase of it, but not to the conversation," he said.
The CSL last evaluated - and dismissed - two harassment charges against the Source in 2002, after it ran cartoon of then-senior Iris Halpern, who was an activist for the rights of janitors on campus. Halpern claimed that the cartoon objectified her body and constituted sexual harassment.
The event also made national news at the time.
The distinction between offensive speech and harassment is a "gray area," Reitman told the Daily back in 2002.
