Had to choose between reporting a speaker or letting it slide at my Texas college

I decided to report a guest speaker for saying pro-Palestine chants should be banned from campus, and now the free speech club is calling me a traitor while the admin did nothing anyway, anyone else stuck between protecting speech and calling out harmful takes?

3 comments

3 Comments

felix1553mo ago

I remember a buddy of mine at a different college who reported a speaker for saying something pretty harsh about immigrant students. He got the same treatment, called a traitor by the speech club and admin basically shrugged it off. It's like you're stuck in this weird spot where people think free speech means no one can ever push back, but that's not how it works. In your case, calling for bans on pro-Palestine chants is just asking to silence one side, so how is reporting that any different from what they're mad about? Sorry you had to deal with that mess, seems like a lose-lose no matter what you do.

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walker.jana3mo ago

That buddy of yours who reported the speaker about immigrants... what happened after admin shrugged it off? Did he end up transferring or just keeping his head down the rest of the semester. I've seen that same cycle play out here with a few tenants who got into political fights in the common areas - nobody wins when the people in charge just pretend it's not their job to sort out. Makes you wonder if the whole point of these clubs and committees is just to have a place to yell at each other without any real consequences for anyone.

olivers281mo ago

Yeah @walker.jana pretty much nailed it, the admin just said the speaker had a right to say it and my buddy ended up keeping his head down the rest of the semester because he didn't want to be that guy anymore. I told him to just document everything and stop expecting the school to take sides, because they never do when it's two students going at it. Makes you wonder if the whole point is just to let people vent until the semester ends and everyone forgets about it.