Being A Stupid Teenager Shouldn't Ruin Your Life
Stupid or just not, uh, entirely sensitive. And the same goes for being 20-something. And in general, I think that we have to stop exiling people using standards that probably many of us could be exiled with, should various private -- or even public! -- conversations come out. (Let's be honest!)
When I first wrote about people getting in trouble for FB posts WAAAAY back in 2007 I had assumed we would adopt more sophisticated social norms that included "people should be forgiven for things they wrote/said as teenagers." BOY was I wrong. https://t.co/cajCklAYpz https://t.co/l54Lgv61qX
— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) March 18, 2021
Greg Lukianoff of the free speech defending organization theFIRE.org, writes with FIRE's Will Creeley in the now defunct Boston Phoenix in 2007 (linked within his tweet, PDF that downloads):
Consider the case of Justin Park, a Korean-American student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. An intelligent and driven young man -- smart enough to start at Hopkins at 15 -- Justin began his junior year this past fall. But due to charges of racial harassment stemming from a party invitation he posted on Facebook, he was suspended from school this past November.As social chair of his fraternity, Justin composed an invitation to a "Halloween in the Hood" party, one of many intentionally un-PC themed parties the fraternity had thrown over the years (others included a "White Trash Trailer Bash" and a "Catholic Schoolgirl Party"). Taking his cues from Chapelle's Show and MTV videos, he crafted the invite's call, listing gangsta rapper Ice-T as the party's host and asking partygoers to "come dressed in yo' bomb ass Halloween costume or git smok'd." It was an awkward attempt, to be sure, but Justin thought it was the kind of ironic humor that his peers would recognize as making fun of himself and the party as much as anything else.
Justin posted the party invitation on Facebook. After all, every one of his friends was a member of Facebook. Come to think of it, so was pretty much the entire student body. And that's where the problem started.
Justin's friends weren't the only ones who saw his invitation. In fact, the university's director of Greek Affairs regularly monitored Facebook activity -- and he was not amused. Calling the invite offensive, he asked Justin to take it down. He did. But once the invite was removed, people kept e-mailing Justin, asking if the party was still on.
So Justin put up another invite the next day, making sure to remove what he thought to be the offensive language. In fact, he hammed it up: right next to the call for attendees to wear "copious amounts of so-called 'bling bling ice ice,' " he wrote that he didn't "condone or advocate racism, fascism, communism, consumerism, capitalism, terrorism, organism(s), sexism, womanism, jism, or any other -ism's," but referred to Baltimore as an "HIV pit" and made mocking references to O.J. Simpson and Johnnie Cochran. As far as Justin and his friends were concerned, however, the invite was an obvious joke.
The party was held the next night, and it was well-attended. Not all who came, however, enjoyed themselves. According to the Baltimore Sun, members of the Black Student Union attended the party, and to many of them the party was a direct affront, a celebration of negative racial stereotypes. Black Student Union members took particular offense to a skeleton pirate dangling from a noose, which they perceived as an obvious symbol of lynching. (The university later concluded, however, that the skeleton had been meant to represent the motion picture Pirates of the Caribbean.)
A week later, Justin received a letter from John Hopkins's associate dean of students, informing him that he'd been charged with violating university policy because of the language used in his invitations. Specifically, Johns Hopkins charged Justin with "failing to respect the rights of others and to refrain from behavior that impairs the university's purpose or its reputation in the community," violating the "university's anti-harassment policy," "failure to comply with the directions of a university administrator," "conduct or a pattern of conduct that harasses a person or a group," and "intimidation."
Although they sound official, these quasi-legal charges wouldn't stand for a second in a real court. According to a 2003 statement by the US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the legal standard for "harassment" is behavior that is "sufficiently serious (i.e., severe, persistent, or pervasive) as to limit or deny a student's ability to participate in or benefit from an educational program." The OCR, in fact, issued the 2003 statement to address the rampant abuse of "harassment" charges to punish un-PC speech. Justin's speech, however obtuse, was still well within the bounds of expression protected by the First Amendment. As Gregory Kane, an (African-American) English professor at Johns Hopkins wrote in an editorial column for the Baltimore Sun: "We'll just keep saying it until the idea sinks in: There is no right, constitutional or otherwise, to not be offended."
But the law and the principles of free speech didn't matter; Justin wasn't being tried in a real court. A university hearing was held, and afterward, Justin learned that despite his apologies he had been suspended for a year and was required to complete 300 hours of community service, attend a diversity workshop, and read 12 books, writing a paper on each.
But weren't these invitations posted on an outside Web site, not connected with the university? Wasn't Justin just joking with his friends? Why was he being punished so harshly for lame jokes made on the Internet -- and since when is it the university's job to watch what students do online?
As I see it:
As teenagers, we should be considered idiots (who are the last to have any idea of it). Check out my career aspiration. I remember blurting out: "Rollerskating is my life!"
— Amy Alkon (@amyalkon) March 18, 2021
Luckily, parents knew to just nod.
PS Pls excuse incoherence/lack of cap below. Should be "I NOTED..." https://t.co/9enJggVZ9f
As teenagers, we should be considered idiots
______________________________________
So why are 18-year-olds allowed to vote?
No one considers it outrageous that you can't run for president until you're 35, after all.
I know, I know - lowering the voting age was somehow considered better than raising the draft age to 21. Well, maybe that was wrong.
As Fran Lebowitz said:
"If you reside in a state where you attain your legal majority while still in your teens, pretend that you don’t. There isn’t an adult alive who would want to be contractually bound by a decision he came to at the age of nineteen."
(That goes for marriage, too, when you think about it.)
Lenona at March 19, 2021 5:50 AM
The Japanese consider 20 to be legal adulthood. Their justice system is a bit draconian, but I am starting to prefer it to U.S. red queen wokism.
Universities should not have the ability to punish people for things that are not crimes in the jurisdiction. And if they do, they ought to be required to refund full tuition and fees to anyone so punished without a subsequent conviction in criminal court.
Isab at March 19, 2021 6:15 AM
You take the claims at face value. That seems rather naive. I doubt Justin Park is being targeted for old posts. Justin Park is being targeted and old posts are the excuse used to rationalize his punishment. Even if they didn't use this they likely would have found some other random thing to punish him over. It is a kangaroo court and innocence is no defense.
"Universities should not have the ability to punish people for things that are not crimes in the jurisdiction. And if they do, they ought to be required to refund full tuition and fees to anyone so punished without a subsequent conviction in criminal court." ~Isab
Agreed Isab. As is noted above these claims wouldn't pass muster in a court of law. The university took his money and refuses to provide the service they were paid for without reasonable cause. Sounds like fraud and defamation to me. Or at least that those laws could be expanded to cover these ever more common situations.
Ben at March 19, 2021 6:37 AM
I disagree. Universities can punish people who break their rules. If they want to make a rule that everyone has to wear ballgowns to Friday tea, that's their prerogative.
NicoleK at March 19, 2021 7:42 AM
Interestingly, we seal court records of actual crimes for which juveniles are convicted. So it is safer at 16 to carjack than to post an un-pc joke on facebook. Wow. Good to know the incentive structure.
I go beyond Amy here: I think we are ALL idiots and impulsive. People need to be cut a little slack. This new regime is just a reign of terror. Two girls got in trouble for posting a picture of themselves in a facial mask--not black, it was green. They thought it looked funny. But nothing is funny anymore. A New Zealand soccer team was called racist for using The Long Blacks as a nickname--but long black in NZ is an american coffee. It is getting nuts. Bill Burr is being called racist BECAUSE his wife is black. What kind of sense does that make? They are calling her just a sex appliance, like a harem girl.
cc at March 19, 2021 8:24 AM
I disagree. Universities can punish people who break their rules. If they want to make a rule that everyone has to wear ballgowns to Friday tea, that's their prerogative.
NicoleK at March 19, 2021 7:42 AM
So you think a school that refuses to admit certain ethnic groups, is okie dokie? And within their prerogative?
You can’t make racist or discriminatory thought crimes a violation of the contract between the school and the student without running afoul of the Constitution. Thank God for small favors.
I think you will find that rules even of private institutions have to be both constitutional and reasonably linked to valid educational objectives (I.e. not totally arbitrary Simon says crap)
Most of these places need to be sued into oblivion, and probably will be.
(I love the way you pop off regularly with these insanely ill thought out statements. )
Isab at March 19, 2021 8:30 AM
> I am starting to prefer it to
> U.S. red queen wokism.
What's red queen wokism? Is the US kind worse?
> Universities can punish people who
> break their rules.
Maybe universities shouldn't have rules against rape, violence, extortion, conversion, theft, drunkenness, or littering. Maybe universities should express their integration within host communities by (gratefully) assuming that existing law enforcement has that stuff covered.
> If they want to make a rule
> that everyone has to wear
> ballgowns to Friday tea
We sometimes fear your experience of secondary education was atypical.
> it is safer at 16 to carjack
> than to post an un-pc
> joke on facebook.
✔
You guys remember, not so many years ago, when having "a mark on your permanent record" was a ludicrous joke?
Those were great times.
Crid at March 19, 2021 9:17 AM
In order to help young people like Justin Park avoid this kind of career-stunting faux pas, Mayor de Blasio has an idea:
https://www.city-journal.org/mayor-tasks-nypd-to-investigate-noncriminal-hate
Asked how the NYPD would confront someone who has done something “hateful” but committed no crime, de Blasio enlarged on his prescription. “One of the things officers are trained to do is to give warnings,” he said. “If someone has done something wrong, but not rising to a criminal level, it’s perfectly appropriate for an NYPD officer to talk to them to say that was not appropriate. . . . I assure you if an NYPD officer calls you or shows up at your door to ask about something that you did, that makes people think twice.”
People who go along with this kind of crap must have a form of Stockholm Syndrome. Just never mind about that spike in homicides.
> We sometimes fear your experience of secondary education was atypical.
✔
Spiderfall at March 19, 2021 10:53 AM
What's red queen wokism? Is the US kind worse?”
Apologies. It was early. Was thinking red queen=Queen of Hearts— Alice in Wonderland, Verdict first, trial after, off with their heads.......
Isab at March 19, 2021 11:16 AM
"Being A Stupid Teenager Shouldn't Ruin Your Life"
That's just crazy talk. No one should get a second chance unless they're rich.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 19, 2021 11:18 AM
I like to use the red queen as an analogy for the insanity of bureaucracy:
"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
Conan the Grammarian at March 19, 2021 11:39 AM
Alas, the world is not the way it "should be." And likely never will be.
This why situational awareness is such a great survival skill.
ruralcounsel at March 19, 2021 12:33 PM
Biden just shitcanned and/or sidelined a bunch of staffers for smoking weed.
When they were younger.
In states where it's legal.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 19, 2021 1:40 PM
Biden just shitcanned and/or sidelined a bunch of staffers for smoking weed.
When they were younger.
In states where it's legal.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 19, 2021 1:40 PM
Never thought we could back to the incoherence of the Obama years so quickly. They all need to claim they are transgender and pitch a stinkin fit.
Isab at March 19, 2021 2:10 PM
> shitcanned and/or sidelined
Hi Goggles.
Crid at March 19, 2021 7:42 PM
A good one from Reddit that should have been taught in grade schools 50 years ago:
Crid at March 19, 2021 7:46 PM
Sorry, wrong thread
Crid at March 20, 2021 9:48 AM
"So why are 18-year-olds allowed to vote?"
So we can conscript the men without societal guilt.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 20, 2021 12:42 PM
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