What's Not in a Name

Protecting a college's "good name" has too often been considered synonymous with limiting student expression. Harvard and a good number of other colleges, however, have usually spotted the distinction; they have seen that freedom of expression can be one of the biggest factors in giving them a "good name" to protect. Brown, on the other hand, has just joined the ranks of colleges that punish undergraduates when they say things which threaten the college's policies or "good name." Brown is not alone. Princeton, Radcliffe, Brooklyn, Adelphi, and others have incurred public ridicule by disciplining students in retribution for "objectionable" articles in undergraduate publications.

Brown's Dean Kenny has risen up in his wrath at a parody on a college rule. The writer displayed a lack of "fundamental intellectual honesty," Dean Kenny said. The writer is now on probation and can write no more. Dean Godolphin of Princeton placed. The Princetonian's chairman on probation a year ago because the paper printed "salacious" stories. Dean Small forbade the CRIMSON's Radcliffe Bureau Chief to write any more about the college. She said the student had written a story "not in the best interests of Radcliffe."

It is irrelevant that Dean Kenny's only excuse was that the parody might incite students to ignore the rule--when it goes into effect. It is irrelevant that the CRIMSON reprinted the material Dean Godolphin called "salacious" without receiving one letter even hinting that the material was indeed salacious. It is irrelevant that Dean Small tried to convince the public that the story had hurt the best interests of Radcliffe.

What is relevant is that Deans Godolphin, Small, and now Kenny have done their excellent colleges more harm than a dozen objectionable or obscene student stories. What these deans have overlooked, and what Harvard's deans have remembered, is that the article is soon forgotten; that the dean himself is soon forgotten; and that what the public retains is the ludicrous picture of the mighty college punishing a student for exercising a freedom.

If a student article is in fact objectionable, the readers are rightly critical of the author and his newspaper. Whether or not the article is objectionable, the college which punishes the "offender" invites equally justifiable criticism.