items tagged with Valdosta State University

With the emergent blooms of spring come a calvacade of awards!  No, not awards celebrating all that is good in journalism and writing, but "awards" that "celebrate" the more ignominious moments of free speech in the past year.  The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has just released their 2008 Muzzle awards, highlighting some of the more egregious violations of free expression in the last year.  "Honorees" of special note to readers interested in higher education:

The 2007 Managing Board of the University of Virginia student newspaper The Cavalier Daily for firing a cartoonist because of public criticism the paper received for publishing one of his cartoons despite the fact that the editorial staff signed off on the cartoon before its publication.

Ronald M. Zaccari, President of Valdosta State University (GA), for expelling a student for protesting the school's construction of two parking garages by posting flyers, writing a letter to the school newspaper, contacting members of the state Board of Regents and posting items on his Facebook profile.

Brandeis University (MA) Administration for declaring professor Donald Hindley guilty of harassment after he explained to his class that Mexican migrant workers are sometimes pejoratively referred to as "wetbacks." Action was taken after a student complained, though the nearly 50-year veteran teacher was provided neither a formal hearing nor written documentation of the claims against him.

So here's a hearty raspberry in the direction of all of this year's "winners!"  Thhhbbbbbpppppppptttttttt! 

Valdosta State University president Ronald Zaccari gets the award for the lamest excuse for student expulsion.  Ever.   Witness the case of T. Hayden Barnes, anti-parking lot crusader:

In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald Zaccari, the university’s president, wrote that he “present[ed] a clear and present danger to this campus” and referred to the “attached threatening document,” a printout of an image from an album on Barnes’s Facebook profile. The collage featured a picture of a parking garage, a photo of Zaccari, a bulldozer, the words “No Blood for Oil” and the title “S.A.V.E.-Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage,” a reference to a campus environmental group and Barnes’s contention that the president sought to make the structures part of his legacy at the university.

Bonus points for the classy move of slipping the letter under the door.  You wouldn't want to waste all the time it took to slip the note into the Campus Mail outbox, now would you?  Better to send an assistant with nothing better to do across campus to hand deliver it... under the crack in the door.   

What other maniacal plot landed sophomore Barnes on the fast track out of VSU?

As additional evidence of the threat posed by Barnes, the document referred to a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: “Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?” It doesn’t mention that Project Spotlight was an online digital video contest and that “shoot” in that context meant “record.” The appeal also mentions that Barnes’s profile stated, at one point, that he was “cleaning out and rearranging his room and thus, his mind, or so he hopes.” That was likely a status update, commonly used by Facebook members to update their friends on what they’re doing at a particular moment — whether literally or metaphorically.

If that got you snickering, what followed should lead to a surefire guffaw:

After Zaccari saw a printout of Barnes’s Facebook page, he was subsequently “accompanied to high-profile events by plain-clothed police officers, and uniformed police officers were placed on high alert,” according to the document. The president has since announced his retirement, six months earlier than expected.

College administrators do all sorts of wacky things - whether consciously or inadvertantly - that limit the free speech rights of college students.  This complete and utter over-reaction, however, takes the prize.