The censored meme my professor warned me about finally showed up on a campus screen in Ohio

Last month, a visiting lecturer at Ohio State flashed a political cartoon that got the school's Twitter account suspended for three days. The meme basically poked fun at a foreign leader, but the university said it violated their harassment policy. Has anyone else run into a situation where a meme got someone in official trouble like that, and did the debate about free speech go anywhere?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_eva2mo ago

oh man reminds me of this time at my community college someone screen recorded a meme slideshow in class and the prof actually reported it to the dean because it had one kinda edgy joke about a politician. whole thing blew up in the group chat for weeks, but nothing really happened in the end. free speech debates are always such a mess on campus lol

the_miles19d ago

And that's exactly the kind of thing that makes me shake my head. I had almost the same situation at the state college I went to, where a kid in my poli sci class shared a funny video clip that made a joke about a local mayor and the professor tried to get him written up for "disruptive content." The dean basically laughed it off and told everyone to just be more careful, but it just shows how quick some faculty are to play hall monitor over nothing. It's like they forget that part of college is supposed to be about learning to handle different opinions without running to the principal's office.

taylor_flores2mo ago

Omg but WHY do professors think they're the free speech police all of a sudden? a meme slideshow is literally the most harmless thing ever and it probably had like 5 people in the whole class who even saw it. the fact that they went straight to the dean instead of just telling the kid to chill is SO extra. and then nothing happened anyway so it was just a waste of everyone's time. college admins love to act like they're protecting some kind of sacred learning environment but really they just don't want to deal with anything even slightly uncomfortable. free speech on campus is a joke when one edgy joke gets treated like a national security threat.