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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."
Is it safe?... Is it safe?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
If anyone is wondering what the student wrote that got the school so pissed off. Here it is: "[He is a] 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 rest of his blog was about video games, drinking and other typical stuff. His blog is now currently offline. Ironically, Marquette University encourages students to post public comments about their professors, and these comments can be very negative.
If you consider the punishment to be a censure rather than some sort of childish spanking, then it makes sense, in that context. In any line of work you are subject to rules and regulations and one of those is that you are not to belittle another member of the profession in public (more or less, I suppose).
He's getting censured for doing something that ought to be out of character of a student in a professional studies course. That's not uncommon. In fact, it's the same as would happen out in the job Marquette.
are being tossed right out the window. We're being conditioned to be silent sheep, fat for the slaughter on too much food and television.
Kinda cool, the power you can weild as a University administrator, silence your critics by taking away everything good they've worked their ass off for.
1. pick one of the guys who gives you shit at school.
2. Start up a blog in his name.
3. Write unflattering commentary about the school.
4. Kick back and watch as the school jumps to conclusions, bans the guy, and takes six months bureaucratic time looking at the situation before realising maybe it isn't really his blog.
You don't have to worry about little things like investigations in #4 happening BEFORE the guy is suspended because hey, this is the private arena, and there's no such thing as due process.
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?.
The case received wide attention, starting with local talk radio, the local daily paper and reverberated through the blogsphere.
Can we just lose the word "blogosphere?" Thanks. The English language thanks you in advance.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
There are a million blogs out of each school. What is the chance that this one gets picked out, read and taken seriously.
They were unnamed in the blog as well.
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.
"You are an asshole." -- that is not libel.
"My professor is a cockmaster." -- that is not libel.
"George Bush is a fucking idiot." -- that is not libel.
"Colin Powell is a nigger." -- not libel.
"Professor X is a pedophile." -- that could be libel.
"My bio professor sleeps with his students." -- that could be libel.
"My professor is an idiot. His lectures are always full of egregious errors." -- that could be libel.
See a pattern? A statement can only be libelous if it's proven to be untrue, thus misrepresentative of the subject. You can't prove statements of pure opinion to be untrue, therefore the first four, although defamatory, does not misrepresent anyone, and so are not libelous.
The civil liberties issue might be a bit different. A lot of people have argued that if you are a student, the school has the right to react to your public remarks about it. This must be true, an employer will have the same right. You cannot expect to remain a member in good standing of a church, company, school or club if you make public speeches bringing it into disrepute. So people are right to argue that this is not a free speech issue.
But surely there is something very odd indeed about the proposed 'punishment' or elements of it. The demand that the guy get counselling. What exactly is the legal status of counselling? When is it required, and who has the right to require that one get it? The idea that a school can require one to get counselled is strange. Even stranger is 'Community Service'. This is used as a punishment by the courts, and the idea that a school can impose it is bizarre.
Surely the civil liberties issue is something like this: what sort of demands may a school make, and what evidence do they have to have before making them? There must be some limits, and it seems to me that in requiring counselling and community service, the school has overstepped them.
Bring it closer to home. My company has a standard of x bugs in y lines of code. One month I am having some problems and go over. Do they have a right to demand that I do 100 hours of community service as penance? Or stand outside at 8.00 with a sign around my neck saying that I sinned? Or wear scarlet overalls for a week? Or not use the cafeteria?
It would be fine to require him to maybe do some remedial tutoring work in the school, or something similar, school related. But the community service and counselling stuff remind you uncomfortably of the Cultural Revolution...
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.
In the US, a true opinion isn't libelous. But...an opinion can be defamatory if it conveys to the recipient a provably false assertion of fact. Whether such an interpretation was conveyed is a factual question to be determined at a trial.
Typically, slander has 3 elements:
1)Is this statement defamatory (puts the person in a false light)?
2)Was this statement made publically?
3)Was there damage to the plaintiff's reputation?
If the statement is subjective, ask the following:
1) Is the statement addressing a matter of public concern?
2) Is the statement expressed in a manner that is not provably true or false?
3) Can the statement be reasonably interpreted as intended to convey actual facts about a person?
4) How precise and specific is the statement?
5) Is the statement verifiable?
6) What is the literary and social context of the statement?
7) What is the public context of the statement?
So, whether something is an opinion is very complicated, legally speaking. Most of your examples could, in fact, be libelous. And if not libelous, could be characterized as an invasion of privacy (placing someone in a false light, which is a tort).
Furthermore, stating that someone is a pedophile is almost lible per-se since the lable of pedophile, by itself, has stigma.