The Primary Source is no longer prohibited from publishing anonymous articles, but is still guilty of harassment and creating a hostile environment.
This decision, recently passed down by Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser, has been well-received by the Tufts administration.
Glaser's ruling stems from a May verdict by the Committee on Student Life (CSL) finding the Source, Tufts' conservative journal, guilty of harassment and creating a hostile environment by publishing two pieces: a "Christmas carol" about affirmative action and a special section about Islam and violence.
Since both of the pieces were unsigned, the CSL imposed the byline requirement, which Glaser vacated on August 27 when responding to an appeal filed by the Source shortly after the May verdict.
Glaser said he reached his decision because the requirement, which applied only to the Source, amounted to "punishment of free speech."
But some feel that speech is still being punished because Glaser did not reverse the underlying verdict that the Source is guilty of harassment and creating a hostile environment.
"The idea that they would overturn the punishment but not overturn the ruling, it really seems to be a compromise that ends up making nobody happy," said Greg Lukianoff, the president of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), an organization that helped the Source defend itself against the charges last semester.
Still, Glaser said that now that the punishment has been taken away, the CSL's decision only represents an opinion rather than a binding verdict.
University President Lawrence Bacow agreed. "In effect, the members of the CSL just expressed their own opinion regarding the offensive behavior in question," Bacow told the Daily in an e-mail.
The CSL's initial May verdict had been met with complaints from FIRE and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation of Massachusetts. While FIRE has maintained its objections after Glaser's decision, Tufts has placated the ACLU.
"I know there are other organizations who are criticizing [the decision]; I'm not going to," said ACLU Foundation of Massachusetts staff attorney Sarah Wunsch, who wrote a letter to Bacow and Glaser in May urging them to overturn the initial decision.
Meanwhile, the Source has maintained a position consistent with FIRE. Senior Matthew Gardner-Schuster, the editor-in-chief of the Source, said that Glaser's decision is a step in the right direction, but that the guilty verdicts need to be set aside, and that the Source should never have been on trial in the first place.
"I think it's a good small step that Tufts is acknowledging the errors of its ways, however it's still very disturbing that Tufts University maintains that it has the right to put a student on trial in its university's system for the mere act of expressing minority opinions or dissenting with the politically correct norm on campus," he said.
But a current trend among Tufts administrators suggests that they may be moving away from exercising that right, as some campus officials, including Bacow, who supported the CSL's initial verdict just months ago are now rallying behind Glaser's decision.
At the end of last semester, Bacow told the Daily in an e-mail that the CSL's verdict represented "a thoughtful balance between two important principles: freedom of expression and freedom from harassment and discrimination."
In his recent comments to the student body, however, Bacow said that, "In retrospect, I think the CSL was ill-advised to hear this case."
Referencing a Viewpoint he wrote in the Daily last semester, he said last week that his current position is in-line with the one he has taken all along: that the solution to offensive speech is more speech, not censorship.
"I was never comfortable with the CSL hearing the case. I said very explicitly in my [Viewpoint] piece in the Daily that I opposed censorship or limiting the right of a student publication to publish," he said.
But when the CSL took the case, the Pachyderm, Tufts' student handbook, contained sections extolling both freedom of speech and freedom from harassment.
As a result, Bacow explained his earlier statement by saying: "Given that the CSL accepted the case and given the ambiguity of the language regarding harassment in the Pachyderm, I thought that they tried to strike a thoughtful balance between competing principles."
Still, some feel that the administration has been less than consistent.
Senior Shirwac Mohamed, who represented the Muslim Students Association (MSA) during the CSL hearing, said that while the administration is now supporting Glaser's decision, some key officials had encouraged him to bring his complaint before the committee last semester. "I think it's a bit hypocritical," he said of their support of the appeal.
At the same time that the MSA decided to bring its complaint before the CSL following the April 11 Source piece "Islam Arabic Translation: Submission," David Dennis (E '07) was already planning to pursue charges against the Source in response to the Dec. 6 carol "O Come All Ye Black Folk," which referred to black students at Tufts as "boisterous yet desirable" and "born into the ghetto." As a result, there was a joint hearing on April 30.
Both Mohamed and Dennis have an indifferent attitude toward Glaser's decision on the appeal, noting they are not disappointed by the choice to vacate the byline requirement as it was never something they had their minds set on.
"I really didn't care either way," Mohamed said. Dennis agreed, calling attention to the fact that his main request last semester was for the CSL to cut off university funds from the Source, something which the committee declined to do. "My entire complaint was completely financial," he said.
