After two boys from a high school in Albany, Ore. were suspended for refusing to remove beaded crucifixes from their necks, The Oregonian investigate's the school's claim that the necklaces, similar to rosaries, are a gang symbol.

"When the 14-year-old and his 16-year-old friend Marco Castro were suspended recently for refusing to remove the religious beads because they were "gang-related," it thrust Oregon into the headlines and has triggered questions over the evolving role of rosaries in religion, fashion and street gangs.

In the latest cultural take of a symbol that's gone from Catholic altars to Britney Spears' bosom, the rosary is blurring the lines of liberty and safety on campus.

Some call the rosary-gang connection a stretch and urge caution. But for educators and public safety officials charged with blocking fluid gang trends, rosaries in the past few years have become one more marker to track suspicious activity."

Gene Nichol, the president of the College and William and Mary, stepped down today after a relentless smear campaign was waged against him by conservative lawmakers in Virginia. Ryan Powers, a former Center for American Progress intern and a senior at the College of William and Mary, has a great post over at Think Progress summarizing and analyzing the unfortunate series of events.

Nichol's greatest sins seem to have been his decisions to allow a student-funded organization to host a sexually themed art show and to have the university remove a crucifix from the non-denominational chapel on campus. He explained his decisions in an email sent to the school community this morning:

Former William and Mary President Gene Nichol.

(Image courtesy College of William and Mary) 

Jesse says that anonymous posters can remain anonymous on a website, thanks to their free speech rights. And he says that's good news. But I remember a story from last spring about Kathy Sierra, a woman who was harassed online. She was sent sexually violent threats:

Her Web site, Creating Passionate Users, was about "the most fluffy and nice things," she said. Sierra occasionally got the random "comment troll," she said, but a little over a month ago, the posts became more threatening. Someone typed a comment on her blog about slitting her throat and ejaculating. The noose photo appeared next, on a site that sprang up to harass her. On the site, someone contributed this comment: "the only thing Kathy has to offer me is that noose in her neck size."

Frightened, Sierra canceled her scheduled appearance at a tech conference, where she was scheduled to be the first female keynote speaker. Instead, she called the FBI and stayed home with her windows and doors locked, frightened for her life. The Post article goes on to say:

A 2006 University of Maryland study on chat rooms found that female participants received 25 times as many sexually explicit and malicious messages as males. A 2005 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the proportion of Internet users who took part in chats and discussion groups plunged from 28 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2005, entirely because of the exodus of women. The study attributed the trend to "sensitivity to worrisome behavior in chat rooms."

It's easy to say that free speech is necessary and should be protected, but in the case of Kathy Sierra, I want the perpetrator to be found and jailed for the longest time possible. There's no reason for Sierra, a female tech blogger, to receive such unwarranted threats. Granted, I'm unclear about the details of the Freerepublic case and why the identities of the commenters wanted to be known, but in a day where the government has access to nearly ever aspect of our identity, I don't see the harm in enforcing such over-the-top assaults that make people live in fear.

Anonymous trolls on the Internet are allowed to remain anonymous, a judge in a California appeals court ruled yesterday. Not only that, but they're allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights and speak their minds, no matter how scathing their comments may be. The court opinion reversed a previous decision that would have allowed Lisa Krinsky, COO of a Florida-based drug service company, to subpoena 10 anonymous Yahoo message board posters' real names.

Full story's here. 

A student at Valdosta State University was expelled for.. well nothing really. On his Facebook profile, he posted a “threatening” collage, the words “Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous.” (referring to recording a video), and a status update that clearly displayed psychotic tendencies: “cleaning out and rearranging his room and thus, his mind, or so he hopes.” 

Of course, those are the official reasons. In all likelihood, he was expelled because he was actively opposing the construction of two university parking garages that were being funded with $30 Million of student fees.

Via Free Exchange on Campus

If college kids are going to talk about one Supreme Court decision today, it will most likely be the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case. But the justices issued another important decision on a case involving free speech, practically striking down an essential part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

Thanks in part to the work of Free Exchange on Campus (a coalition in which Campus Progress participates), David Horowitz's censorship legislation, the Academic Bill of Rights, hasn't moved forward in eight of the nine statehouses in which it's been introduced in 2007. But look out in Arizona, where a state senate committee just approved a bill that could fine, suspend, or terminate professors for:

• Endorsing, supporting or opposing any candidate for local, state or national office.

• Endorsing, supporting or opposing any pending legislation, regulation or rule under consideration by local, state or federal agencies.

• Endorsing, supporting or opposing any litigation in any court.

• Advocating “one side of a social, political, or cultural issue that is a matter of partisan controversy.”

• Hindering military recruiting on campus or endorsing the activities of those who do.

What's particularly fascistic here is the suggestion that professors can't even take a stance on "social, political, or cultural issues that are matters of partisan controversy." Could someone lose their job for suggesting gay people have the right to marry? Or that women have the right to have an abortion? Think about how this would stifle discussion in law school classrooms, for example, where questions of rights and morality are so central to interpreting the law.

Every college campus has a few of these kids. They see themselves generally as non-partisan (or non-conservative, or libertarian), since their intelligence and objectivity put them above the fray of such squabbles. Contrarian often for its own sake, their arguments use deliberate and contrived non-PCisms and attacks on so-called conventional wisdom. In a nutshell, they parade provocation as unique insight. But, to paraphrase Dave Chappelle, sometimes arrogant and self-indulgent games of devil’s advocate can go wrong. The latest “victim” of this well-intentioned and oh-so-misguided practice is John Petroski, former opinion editor of Central Connecticut State University’s The Recorder.

In a Feb. 7th op-ed entitled “Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It,” Petroski’s feeble attempt at satire (ostensibly of modern news media sensationalism) crossed the line. “Which line is that?” you might ask. Why, it’s the “Rape is Never Funny, especially in the context of a serious college publication” line. More on that later, but first, to the op-ed and ensuing controversy.

Petroski’s gem of a satire opened with a defense of rape as “a magical act that benefits society as a whole.” The piece then meanders into a bizarre defense by way of obscure ancient Roman parables (all true scholars cite classical history to defend themselves, if you were unaware) and a hypothetical musing on why Puritans didn’t make the thrifty choice to rape native women before getting to the absolutely, knee-slapping hilarious parts: “Take ugly women for example. If it weren't for rape, how would they ever know the joys of intercourse with a man who isn't drunk.”

Moving onto how rape benefits prisoners, the author mentions how rape spares them from loneliness, and that “[i]nstead, they merely need worry about treating their rapist with enough love and respect to earn a quick reach-around.” As for a satire of media sensationalism, the closest Petroski gets is by arguing that rape should be endorsed for the sake of more captivating news headlines, just before advocating “some saucy circle-jerk rape action” over more mundane topics.

 The publication was, predictably, met with disbelief and outrage. A hundred students protested in front of The Recorder’s offices, seeking the resignation of the editor and Petroski. The University President was pulled into the mess as well, defending free speech while condemning the piece. Eventually, apologies were issued by both the editor and the (now-demoted) Petroski, and the ensuing dialogue seems to have been sincere enough that the controversy appears largely settled on the CCSU campus. But that it happened at all, that the editorial board could not foresee this being offensive and problematic, and that, during a campus forum discussion, it took the bravery of several students who are survivors of rape to bring the point home points to a more serious disconnect.