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Dental School Blogger Punishment Reduced
John McAdams writes "When a Marquette University Dental School student blogger made some nasty comments about an (unnamed) professor and (unnamed) classmates on his personal blog, the Dental School administration imposed a draconian punishment on him. He was to be suspended from school for a year, lose a prestigious scholarship, and seek counseling for supposed "behavioral problems."
The case received wide attention, starting with local talk radio, the local daily paper and reverberated through the blogsphere.
Dental School Dean William Lobb, considering the case on appeal, has now reduced the student's punishment. The student now faces probation rather than suspension, will be allowed to keep his scholarship, and will not have to seek counseling. He will have to do 100 hours of community service, and apologize for the blog posts.
While this is certainly good news for the student, it leaves open the question of how much freedom Marquette Dental School students have in posting on their personal, non-university connected blogs."
That is not so bad, and if it is about an unnamed professor I don't know what the school is doing. I'd sue, these are the types of cases that need to be brought forth. Schools are businesses, they really only care about their bottom line despite their espousing (falsely) intellectual freedom and some times they need to be slapped back down.
The mere fact that someone can get into trouble by ranting into cyberspace without naming someone, is a bit un-nerving. When did thought crimes start to become a reality?
It takes a bit of effort to put anything interesting into a blog, and remain 100% anonymous, but if cases like this pop up all of the time, then it might be worth considering being a 100% anon-a-blog.
Someone should do a poll, to see how many bloggers have found problems with blogging, in the sense that they've been fired, shunned, etc. because of what they write. It might be exceedingly common to get in trouble over ramblings on the web.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
By reducing the sentence, the school came out ahead. He's on probation instead of being kicked out. That means he can't say anything bad about what happened. He has to apologize on his blog. That means he has to lie about what happened.
If the school had just dumped him, he would have sued, (possibly won) and generated an even larger amount of bad press.
Yet again, the big guys win.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
Not by a long shot. The school stands in breach of conract, and the student should fry their asses in court.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Even though he is 22, I'd wonder how some of his future patients would feel about his comments. Folks need to remember that this stuff will stay around for quite a while ... in some way. Especially now that it's in the papers.
No they are not. Please don't overreact. Free speech does not mean free speech without consequences. Sure you have the right to say whatever you want but don't act surprised when there are repercussions to that speech. Would you think it would be outrageous if a student ran around a University Quad screaming every racial epithet known to civil society and a Dean kicked them right out of school?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
In the American Union ve haf free speech unless ve are students or employees or depend on government contracts or grants or regulatory permits.
So what? He didn't name the teacher.
So what? Free speech isn't about escaping the consequences of what you write. It's about freedom of expression.
If he was being punished for writing "I disagree with this professors political views" or "I disagree with his teaching methods" then, yeah, we'd have a reason to be outraged.
But, "cockmaster"? WTF? Yeah, the original punishment seems a little harsh (loss of scholarship!). Even so I don't see how this is "your rights online".
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I find it rather ironic and sadly funny that a student who wastes space blogging about video gaming and drinking sees fit to comment on other students' maturity (or lack thereof). He sounds like your somewhat typical, immature college-age male.
#DeleteChrome
Not to belittle another member of the profession in public? That's never been a rule, nor will it ever be. If that were the case, people that work in the tech industry can't tell you what programs are good and what are dangerous. If this was the president, everyone here that's said to someone in public that gator was a bad product that did nothing but trick people and steal data from unwilling people, would be sued and/or punished. Freedom of speech means, in a way, freedom to say things and be punished for saying them. If that wasnt' the case, anyone can be punished for saying anything, even if what you were saying was the truth. Remember, anything you say can and will be offensive to someone.
Well, as a final note, I'll take a crack at saying something offensive to prove my point. Those that support censorship are usually the ones that have something to be gained from being able to punish someone for tell the truth. Is that a fact? Is that an opinion? Is that a wild spectulation? Is that directed at anyone? You decide.
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
Here is the lesson to be learned: Piss a person off, risk losing valuable relationship with that person.
Piss off your girlfriend, risk losing your girlfriend. Piss off a waiter, get tossed out of restaurant. Piss off university, discover how hard it is to subsequently attend said univerisity.
Really now, why is everyone so upset about this? Freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from the consequences of such speech. Duh.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
If the student called the professor a cockmaster in person, would the results be the same? Worst case, I can see him getting kicked out of the class. I doubt a loss of scholarship or suspension would have happened. This is only going on my limited experience with professors.
I've had a lot of problems at schools. And discussed them at length with professors. I've been harshly critical, honest and blunt about my feelings and observations with them. I've always dealt with them directly. I decided to leave school, in those circumstances it just wasn't working. I never considered posting a blog and naming names.
From the breif description of the issue. It sounds like censorship, the school abusing its power, etc to me. Name calling isn't professional, but I don't think it should be illegal either. If the most accurate expression for my frustration is to call someone a cockmaster, I believe I should be able to say that openly without fear of reprisal. I think that such a thing would reflect on my own maturity and intelligence (in a negative way).
Maybe if they are taking issue with his statements they should make it an assignment for him to elaborate on his cockmaster thesis. I'd quit a school that reacted like that personally. And not participate in organizations that treat their members that way. If someone thinks I'm an asshole or likes a cock in the ass or whatever, they're free to say that as far as I'm concerned. Society is just getting too stupid. My solution is to withdraw from the institution and go forge new ground somewhere. Make something new that isn't some old crusty dried out turd.
Don't professionals call eachother cockmasters all the time? Just in a more longwinded fashion with a more varied choice of words?
...but that's the way it works when you enter a medically-related profession.
I'm in medical school, and once you commit yourself to being a physician, you are expected to conduct yourself professionally in and out of school, just as you would on or off duty as a doctor, regardless of place or time.
Doctors historically and even today are one of the most respected, and trusted, professions in the US. Dentists and nurses certainly want high standards for their professions, as well. Most medical and dental schools have explicit clauses in their student codes regarding unprofessional behavior or actions at ANY time; mine certainly does, and I'd expect Marquette to have it as well.
Calling a teaching professor a "cockmaster" would not be tolerated if he did it face to face with the professor, and it's not any different because he did it online in his blog. If he can't be trusted to keep comments about an academic superior and his fellow peers professional, how can he be trusted to keep comments about future patients confidential and professional as well? Is this the dentist 10 years from now who'll be poking fun of his "stupid immigrant patients that need to learn to pick up a toothbrush and a book on English" at a supermarket with his buddies? Is this the public image of the dental profession that the dental profession wants? And is this the image that Marquette wants to project as its students and alumni?
My school goes out of its way to encourage feedback from its students; we have a student-run quality control feedback team for the curriculum; we have online and traditional commenting forums, end-of-section material, direction, and teaching evaluations, etc. But they also stress and stress again to keep it 100% professional, to make criticism constructive, impersonal, and respectful. We are being evaluated in every interaction as future doctors, whether accidental or in a deliberate setting... and just as the majority of communication is not verbal even when words are being spoken, doing your book learning is just a small part of learning to be a medical professional.
There are no civil rights being broken here... just a student needing to figure out whether mouthing off about his peers and professional superiors is more important than learning what it takes to join his chosen profession.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
What an odd idea. What is freedom of expression then, other than not having undue punishments for your speech? By your logic no government has ever restricted speech. People are still free to say whatever they want, but they shouldn't expect to avoid the punishment of being arrested.
If he was being punished for writing "I disagree with this professors political views" or "I disagree with his teaching methods" then, yeah, we'd have a reason to be outraged.
So, we should have no free speech except for a few pre-defined areas? Yeah, this guy vents about an unnamed professor to his friends and gets probation and 100 hours of community service. That seems fair.
And your post is more proof that people don't understand "civil liberties".
First, if he publishes "a false statement that negatively affects someone's reputation", he's guilty of libel, and the professor can sue him in civil court for damages.
Second, if he goes to a private university, agrees to a code of conduct, then violates it- that's not "civil liberties".
As is never mentioned in these stories when they're linked to in summaries such as here on slashdot, the comments aren't mentioned- and they're always rather obnoxious. His comments, or at least, the only ones now available:
"cockmaster of a teacher. I don't even gratify him by calling him a professor. He is one who teaches, as in should teach infants and children."
The "Marquette Warrior" blogger goes on a rant about how "students have probably had this discussion amongst themselves". And guess what? Shockingly, THAT ALSO is not okay; the spoken version of "libel" is called "slander".
Bloggers seem absolutely shocked at a centuries-old legal concept: one cannot just wander around saying (or publishing) whatever the hell one wants to. If you lie and it damages someone's reputation...that's not legal, and you can fully expect to be held accountable.
Please help metamoderate.
Ironic, considering that what you're complaining about is actually due to the free exercise of civil liberties, by two parties (the school and the student) involved in a private business relationship.
In fact, by wanting the government to protect the student, you're advocating the reduction of civil liberties, by wanting the government to interfere in a private matter between two parties.
No thank you, Comrade, we don't need to get the nanny state involved. Let the adults work it out between themselves.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
University officials should be ashamed of themselves. Their purpose is to promote learning. HOWEVER, this is not an issue of rights. No one forced this student to attend this school, or continue his enrollment. And this university is not obligated to continue educating him. This is a matter of business, they have entered into an agreement where money changes hands, with the product being learning.
Mary Ann Glendon's book, Rights Talk , is a good read. Her basic premise is that Americans are calling too many things rights -- and it's a very bad thing. We have a right not to be censored by the government, but this does not extend to private practice. When we start dilluting our concept of rights and liberties, we bring ourselves into the same sort of slippery slope that rights-advocates argue from. If you suddenly have a right to walk your dog, or bad-mouth a professor, the bar gets set lower and lower. At some point, violating rights really isn't a big deal. And that's a scary place to be, because it means we begin to lose the actual rights we have.
So let's stop talking about this in reference to civil liberties. If you want to talk rights abuse, look at the domestic spying flap. But let's not cheapen our rights by including them in this debate.
The only restraint that cannot lawfully be resisted is (naturally) the law. This is why "freedom of speech" applies to laws and the governments that enforce them. Marquette University is not government. Nobody was arrested. No one's freedom of speech was restricted. It's a private institution. They are essentially free to restrict the speech of students as they see fit... with the obvious caveat that they had better be ready to accept the consequences (e.g. public outrage, condemnation) for their draconian punishment. See, it works both ways. In this case, both sides are probably unhappy with the outcome-- which is about the best you can reasonably wish for.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Taking no consideration of whether there was any merit to what the student said in the blog, it seems to me that the students at Marquette have all the freedom that anybody else has to say what they will. However, just as anybody else does, they have to deal with any retaliatory action from the party they are attacking. In this case those people happen to be authority figures in a non-democratic institution. The reaction of the school could be considered rash, but it could also be considered as a lesson in PR. Professionals, dentists and doctors, do have reputations to keep up as well as relationships and rapport with clients and business partners. This whole ordeal is a lesson in how rapport is valuable and how you should carefully choose what you say to the general public, even if it is on your personal time.
That's technically right. There's nothing illegal or unconstitutional about what they're doing since they're a private institution, but it's still unethical for them to abuse their power like that. Also, since many private universities still receive government funding and enjoy certain privileges as academic institutions, they have a little more social responsibility to set a good example for the rest of society. The student's actions were neither disruptive nor injurous to anyone, so the university had no right to suppress his freedom of expression under duress of academic threats. An individual should not have to forfeit their right to free speech in order to pursue an academic career.
If no one stands up to these kinds of abuses of power by our academic institutions, then the state of academia in our society will continue to degenerate in this manner--becoming more repressive, more reactionary, and eventually becoming institutions which stifle original thought and individuality instead of fostering it. This will only turn our nation's youth away from higher education and foster more anti-intellectualism in our society.
If we don't recognize some limit to what an employer, school, or other organization can rightfully control, then a company can say "our official position is that we support the Iraq war, so we will all be voting here in the office in the next election. Just turn your ballot in to your supervisor." There has to be a socially recognized limit, even if the courts don't address the question directly.
And no, I'm not a Marxist. But we do have an unnerving tendency to turn our profession into an all-encomassing identity. It's just a freakin' job, for crying out loud.
I'm regularily astonished by the arrogance of institutions of higher learning. They are constantly attempting to control the lives of the ADULTS that PAY them for a service. Imagine this kind of behavior in any other buisness relationship.
Schools of all kinds are incredibly power mad. My kid got caught doing donuts in a supermarket parking lot on a saturday. He was fined by the police and grounded by me. But for some reason his high-school decided that they were god and were going to punish him as well. If it doesn't happen on school property it isn't the schools buisness, period.
If blockbuster refused to rent you movies because you write bad reviews of Tom Cruise movies, that would not be tolerated. Why should it be tolerated from a school. They are a buisness that like any other.
The guy called an unspecified professor (his friends surely know who he was referring to) a cockmaster. He was also insulting about other students? Not really, all he did was state a general opinion about the people he has to associate with. Chances are, those around him who saw his blog, if they disagreed with it, will just put him into the "what an asshole, I hope I don't have to work with him" box.
If you're doing a joint project, and you think that everyone else in your group is just slacking off while you do all the work, you'll probably say the same things to everyone around you every chance you get as well, except of course to the people you're working with. And if you bring your feelings to your professor's attention, essentially asking for help to deal with your fellow asshat associates, he's probably just going to shrug his shoulders, and more or less say, "figure something out". He's NOT going to just give YOU an F on the spot, turn you into the School's administrative punishment systems for some alleged breach of student misconduct, and otherwise roast your balls over a bunsen burner however he can, unless you persist in not figuring something out and whining to him about it.
If you disagree, think for a minute about someone coming to a party you throw and cursing at everyone and being generally rude for the duration. Do you have the right to kick them out of your house? If so, please explain the difference.
I forget what 8 was for.
Any authoritarian body can wield quasi-governmental control over a person.
True.
Universities have greater quasi-governmental powers than most municipalities.
True. They likely have a charter, bylaws, or equivalent. Those would likely be implied parts of the contractual agreememnt between the student and school. If they say: student can't be penalized for free speech, he has grounds for a suit. They likely lean on the side of the school, however, and that's the school's right to have it that way.
Additionally most private Institutions still receive Federal and State funding.
Probably also true in this case. However, funding likely takes the form of specific grants, rather than general operating funds (as would a state school). Those grant awards would be contractually governed, and the terms of said contract would indicate whether the funding was contingent on anything remotely approaching abiding by the Constitutional free speech guarantee. If it does, well, then maybe those specific funds should be yanked. Trouble seeing grounds for a suit against the school by the student based on this, unless they withheld state/federally granted funds from him, but again that would have to be contractually related.
No place should be allowed to impose sanctions on speech, but especially Instituition of higher learning should not be allowed.
Overly broad, general, and False. I may limit what I allow you to say in my house, and may remove you from the house and deny re-entry if you violate that. That's my right as a private individual with private property. You may get all the neighbors mad at me as a result, which may shame me into letting you back in, but that is your right as an individual, and my right in deciding whether or not to cave in. No where in any of this are there legitimate grounds for a suit.
If they will not do so on thier own, then they should be slapped down by the will of the people.
He could always go for damages related to emotional distress, but he violated anything that was contractually stipulated...True. As they have been. The court of public opinion has likely been the deciding factor in the school official's decision to reduce the penalty. It should be eliminated altogether, but it's a step. This is how things should work. Not through frivolous civil suits. The constitution guarantees the right to be an idiot. That applies to both parties in this case.