College Student Punished For Blogging
Posted on January 8th, 2006
We've all heard of bloggers being fired from their jobs for lambasting their employment situation online, even when they don't name the subjects. But what about college students 'guilty' of the same thing?
After a student at the Marquette Dental School criticized professors and classmates (though he did not name them) in his blog last month, he received severe punishments including suspension, a revoking of an academic scholarship, and orders to meet with a counselor.
The decision ignited controversy over the issue of free speech. Recently, the punishments were reduced in severity.
From the Marquette Warrior:
The suspension has been overturned. Rather, the student will face three semesters of probation.
The action of the Student-Faculty Review Committee stripping him of his scholarship has been reversed.
The student will not be required to seek counseling for (nonexistent) "behavioral issues."
The student will have to do 100 hours of community service, and make a public Apology to his class.
Lobb apparently took the issue to an Advisory Committee in the Dental School.
The action has to be seen as a rebuke to Dental School Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Denis Lynch and to Dr. Anthony Ziebert, who presided at the hearing. Either Lobb is now quite mad at Lynch and Ziebert, or Lobb is himself part of the problem.
It's also a rebuke to the entire Student-Faculty Review Committee, who signed off on a draconian punishment that they had to know was absurdly harsh. The Committee failed to properly function as a check on administrators who were abusing their power.
The punishment is still too harsh. The most that the Dental School should have done is for some administrator to take the student aside and say "off the record, don't you think those posts were a bit ill-advised? Don't you think that maybe you should take them offline?" The least the school could have done was to entirely blow off something that was, in reality, pretty trivial.What do you think? Did the school have the right to do this? Or are they hypocrites for punishing the practice of free speech and shared opinions, the very things higher education is supposed to encourage?
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