Some students and a Fox News commentator have called for defunding or otherwise punishing the campus publication The Insurgent after it published cartoons depicting Jesus with an erection and in other homoerotic poses.
They’ve said it doesn’t fit into the mission of the University and the cartoons were pornography unprotected by court opinions. They failed to prompt student government or the University to act.
But now students have another avenue to attack: Some argue that the anarchist/Marxist publication harassed a religious group on campus in violation of student rules of behavior. In fact, the incoming student government president has even recommended students who feel the cartoons harass them file an official complaint with the University.
A student Conduct Code Violation?
Some students think the publication of the cartoons in The Insurgent’s March issue was a violation of the University’s Student Conduct Code, which punishes students for committing crimes and cheating.
One clause of the code addresses discrimination based on religion.
Harassment is prohibited at the University based on race, gender, religion and other characteristics if it involves “specifically insulting another person in his or her immediate presence with abusive words or gestures when a reasonable person would expect that such act would cause emotional distress or provoke a violent response,” according to the code. ASUO President Jared Axelrod, who sat on a committee that worked to revise the code recently, said in an interview Tuesday that he couldn’t interpret this clause, but it’s probable that students were distressed about the cartoons.
Axelrod said the conduct code “doesn’t supersede state or federal laws” and that “there’s still the right to free speech.”
Axelrod recommended people who feel harassed by the publication to file an official complaint with the Office of Judicial Affairs.
“If they feel that’s in their best interest, they always have the power to do that,” he said.
Quoting from the American Law Reports, a research group that gathers legal reports from various court cases, Student Senator and law student Wally Hicks wrote that a number of courts have stated that apart from the First Amendment, the “regulation of the student press may be sustained on the basis of student writers’ gross disobedience of, or disrespect towards, school or college officials or regulations.”
Hicks, who will remain a senator next year, wrote that if The Insurgent did violate the code, the administration or student government could punish the publication.
He cited a quote from the ALR that states that courts generally believe that “schools and colleges may prohibit obscenity in student publications,” although the interpretation of what is obscene is often disputable.
“With Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito on the bench, I would hesitate to assume anything right now with regard to obscenity,” Hicks wrote. “Obscenity is always arguable to some degree or another.”
Oregon law permits consenting adults to possess and view obscene materials.
Former Student Senator Dallas Brown has argued that minors have access to the publication on campus because it appears on newsstands.
One University student, psychology major Leslie Canton, said there’s no question that the cartoon and article in The Insurgent specifically insulted Christians “and that those involved in their publication intended to cause University Christians distress,” she wrote in an e-mail to the Emerald.
“Those responsible for the cartoons defended their actions by positing that they were simply doing to Christians what was done to Muslims in Danish papers,” she wrote. “Unless these writers/cartoonists are far less intelligent than I realized, they knew the extent of the hurt and distress felt by Muslims” when Danish cartoons published images of the Prophet Muhammad.
Several people, including an 8-year-old boy, died in rioting over the cartoons, according to the Overseas Security Advisory Council.
Jessica Brown, co-editor of The Insurgent, wrote in a May issue editorial that the purpose of publishing the cartoons and editorials was to “to instigate much needed discussion about a powerful and oppressive institution within society.”
She states that the Christian right attacks women’s reproductive rights and promotes bigotry against the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgendered community.
“I feel that the belief system promoted by Christianity is fundamentally flawed and detrimental to society; thus it is extremely important to study and discuss,” she wrote.
The proposed Senate resolutionSome have argued that it’s the student government’s job to give fees to campus groups based on their contributions to the cultural and physical development of the campus community – the mission of the University.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin v. Southworth, requires that when officials set budgets for groups, including publications, that they not look at the viewpoints of the group.
But University rules require that groups contribute to the cultural and physical development of the campus community to receive student funds.
The Insurgent has been criticized by many students, community members and student government leaders for not following the University’s rules.
Hicks and former Senator Dallas Brown planned to introduce a resolution calling for sanctions against The Insurgent last Wednesday. Those sanctions would have included freezing funds for the remainder of the fiscal year or next year’s budget and asking for an apology to all those offended by the publication.
“The Insurgent’s March issue was inflammatory, divisive, and designed to provoke people on an emotional rather than an intellectual level,” Hicks wrote. “As such, it detracted from – rather than contributed to – the university’s goal of promoting discourse about important issues.”
After eight senators walked out of the May 24 Senate meeting, ending discussion on The Insurgent, Brown said it doesn’t make sense to tax students when the intention of the group receiving the fee is to insult them.
Hicks said some interpretations of the Supreme Court case were inaccurate in his resolution, such as the division of ASUO and administrative power over distributing the incidental fee. But he said he still believes that the fundamental argument is whether the publication violated the University’s rules.
Hicks said the ASUO, which spends incidental fees, can decide whether groups fit those rules and, if so, how much student money they should receive.
This is the role of the Programs Finance Committee, a group that holds hearings on each of the more than 130 student programs. The PFC gave The Insurgent a 10.5 percent budget increase – or nearly $2,000 – for a total budget of $20,296 next year.
In an interview Tuesday, Hicks said he would not further pursue the issue in the Senate because the decisions from the ASUO thus far seem to have settled the issue from a funding standpoint.
“I tried my part. I researched it as far as I could, and that’s my conclusion,” he said.