That The Primary Source will be brought before the Committee on Student Life (CSL) today for harassment and fostering a hostile on-campus environment is hardly surprising. The hearing represents what many students have been calling for since last semester: accountability.
The CSL hearing is a conglomeration of many different problems, none of which present an easy solution. The most pressing issue is that of free speech: What limits should the university impose upon the publications it funds and for which it allows its name to be used?
As a newspaper committed to the values of the First Amendment, the Daily condemns any measures taken against the free speech of any individual or publication, no matter how questionable we find that speech to be. If the CSL withdraws funding and access to Tufts resources, such as the computers in the MAB lab, it would be prohibitively difficult for the Source to continue publishing, effectively resulting in censorship. Although legal precedent only clearly prohibits university censorship of student publications in public universities, as a liberal institution of higher learning, Tufts should be committed to the values of protecting free speech.
However, the university has other ideals to which it is equally committed, one of which is the creation of a non-hostile environment for its students. While a college experience should of course test the boundaries of a student's comfort level, expose them to controversial and even offensive ideas, and make them question their beliefs at times, the systematic alienation of entire populations on the basis of their race, ethnicity or religion is something that the university is committed to preventing.
Holding the Source accountable for its actions, though, is a difficult and delicate situation. The only outcomes of the CSL hearing that would result in any real consequences - and it is not even clear that the CSL has the jurisdiction to follow this route - is to de-fund or de-recognize the publication, place it on some sort of probation or require that its contents be regulated in some way, all of which effectively censor free speech.
Though the Source staff's repeated offenses prove that they are not responsive to student complaints, and for some, censorship may seem to be the only recourse to stopping their offensive pieces from popping up again, the Daily believes that to establish a precedent of censorship would in fact be an even greater injustice to the Tufts community. Though it is free speech that allows the Source to publish material that offends the student body, it is also what allows students to condemn such material in writing.
No publication on campus should have to worry that their work must be approved by the administration beforehand. A precedent of censorship does not only apply to publications, but to all student organizations: should the Bubs have to worry that the administration will find their songs offensive, for example? It is with this in mind that the Daily strongly condemned the proposed creation of a regulatory media panel earlier in the semester, and continues to condemn any limits to the free speech of all students.
Students upset with The Primary Source should take comfort in the fact that they are able to respond accordingly, whether it be in letters to the Source's editor, Viewpoints in the Daily, public town meetings, or other means of outspoken condemnation. Stopping the Source's publication would in effect be a Pyrrhic victory, forcing all student organizations at Tufts to worry that their output be subject to censorship and administrative approval. Though the Source may continue publishing what it wants, students can continue to let it be known that they disapprove.
