Of banned T-shirts and coerced letters

This wasn't supposed to happen here

[Reprinted from Issues & Views March 10, 2003]

It's really a hard thing to do, this business of giving the other guy his say, no matter how much you disagree. What were those Founders thinking?

In the most recent case of banned T-shirts, this episode might have been predicted. When, several years ago, school officials began forbidding students from wearing T-shirts with Confederate flags imprinted on them or sewing patches with Confederate symbols to their bookbags and clothing, one might have expected what could happen next.

Sooner or later, some other symbols or messages were bound to offend the sensibilities of the easily offended and intolerant. For Stephen Downs and his son Roger, it has happened sooner. When, in the midst of a meal in the food court of a shopping mall, father and son were stopped by a security guard and asked to remove their T-shirts, they must have thought the guard was nuts (or perhaps some kind of pervert). But the man was simply doing his duty as an emissary of the management of the New York state Crossgates Mall near Albany.

The managers were alerted and took action, after spotting the messages printed on the Downs's shirts and noticing that Stephen was conversing with another shopper. The offensive messages on the shirts were, respectively, "Peace on Earth/Give Peace a Chance" and "Let Inspections Work/No War With Iraq"--each now considered "antiwar." For wearing their beliefs on their chests, the Downs men almost wound up paying for more than just the costs of those shirts. Although the son complied with the guard's request, father Stephen refused. At that point, the police were summoned and Stephen was arrested on a charge of "trespassing." It has been verified that neither father nor son was soliciting mall customers in any way, and that Stephen chatted only with two individuals who approached him.

In the South, when students are suspended for their southern-oriented attire, they usually are accused of wearing symbols or messages that are "disruptive" to other students in the school. So too, in the case of the Downs men. Their T-shirts were deemed "disruptive" to other mall shoppers. When word about the arrest was broadcast over media, Erin O'Brien, a peace activist, decided to gather together as many supporters as possible to stage a protest at the mall. The next day, about 150 people, all wearing T-shirts with various peace messages, marched through the mall--clear targets for arrest.

But by now, mall officials had come to their senses, and not only offered no resistance to the newest "trespassers," but dropped all charges against Stephen Downs. It seems likely that the managers were wise enough to envision a possible daily nightmare, inspired by their intolerant practices, where increasing numbers of T-shirt wearing "trespassers" ultimately outnumber the shoppers.

In the latest report on this story, the mall security guard had been fired, giving the antiwar protesters, along with father and son Downs, a new crusade--that is, fighting for his reinstatement. Claiming that he had been "professional and polite," Stephen Downs insists there is no reason for the guard's dismissal. Scapegoat, anyone?

In yet another display of outrageous intolerance, we have the case of Professor Rosalyn Kahn, who decided to use her power as teacher to compel her Speech class students at California's Citrus College to write letters to President Bush urging him not to go to war in Iraq. Kahn made it clear that any student who refused to write a letter expressing this antiwar sentiment would be penalized with a lowered grade. And she kept her word.

In the first week that she presented this assignment, some students refused to write ideas that did not reflect their true beliefs, and they were, indeed, penalized by Kahn. Not content with the dubious success of this first assignment, the next week Kahn insisted the students write similar antiwar letters to California State Senator Jack Scott. She collected these letters and delivered them, in person, to Scott's office. The woman was clearly on a roll!

Although one of Kahn's exasperated students contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE), the activist organization that defends individual rights on campus, it seems that college administrators had already caught wind of Kahn's one-woman antiwar campaign, and set out to deal with it. Denouncing Kahn's behavior and calling her assignment "an injustice," Citrus College President Louis Zeller sent apologies to both President Bush and Senator Scott. He explained the illegitimate nature of the assignment and requested that all letters be retracted.

Even though the school responded quickly, Associate Dean Samuel Lee credited FIRE with clarifying for the university community the unacceptability of a teacher coercing students to share her political views. Her behavior was described as "an unconscionable abuse of classroom power."

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