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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."
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?.
In the American Union ve haf free speech unless ve are students or employees or depend on government contracts or grants or regulatory permits.
...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.
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.
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.
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.