The Georgia GuardDawg is reporting that two conservative students at Georgia Tech are suffering verbal abuse from their Liberal counterparts, and is lamenting the lack of action taken by the administration to protect them from such speech.
These two students, who are fire-breathing, in-your-face activists in their spare time, are also, of course, the same ones who, with the help of the ADF and David Horowitz, sued their school last year to get speech codes prohibiting insults and other such "verbal abuse" struck down.
Well, they were successful - and, thanks to their success, have no recourse against the "verbal abuse" they are still receiving, because, thanks again to their action, such "abuse" is no longer prohibited.
Oops.
Click title to read on...
Here's what I said back when the case was first decided:
While I definitely think that the school's speech codes themselves were a poor use of administrative power, I agree that their selective enforcement was an even worse problem. While conservative students could be disciplined for opposing any PC guideline, any assault on what we would consider "traditional values" by campus Leftists would go absolutely unpunished.
Here's my problem with the action -- actually, with the plaintiffs: [...] one of the lessons arising from this is and should be the practicality of the old adage "There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." If you want to engage in in-your-face political activism, you can't expect the "state nanny" to extract you from your difficulties -- you must be prepared to take abuse and blowback from all sides. Likewise, "if you can't take the heat..," as they say -- in this case, in the form of name-calling, verbal abuse, and protests -- then maybe you should pick up a different avocation, and leave activism to others.The plaintiff with whom I've had the most contact -- and with whom I conversed in depth when writing my article about the suit itself, which ran on Townhall.com -- definitely fell into the latter camp, in my opinion. She was amazed that she was taking abuse for her activism, and had severe trouble dealing with its extent. While this reaction is absolutely normal, she did at the time have the fallback reassurance that all of the heat she was taking was in the name of showing just how selective the enforcement of these rules were; even though her position was bad, her point was getting across louder and clearer than ever.
Now that is gone. The playing field is level, and anything the other side wants to say is completely legal. Some may say that this is a good thing regardless; I don't disagree. I do think, though, that, for those who have been involved in this with the belief that a victorious outcome would lead to greener pastures and a more tolerant -- and tolerated -- existence for campus conservatives, a Pandora's Box of now LEGAL abuse and protest may well have now been opened.
The problem isn’t the action. The problem isn’t the loosening of one-sided restrictions on free speech. The problem is that now the gloves are effectively off on both sides; no longer can the conservative activists point to discrimination on the part of the administration as the reason for their troubles.
I agree with free speech and a level playing field; however, I just hope that these young, idealistic college students know what it is they've set themselves up for -- and that they want what it is they're going to get. As the saying goes, "be careful what you ask for..."
Guess all those letters to the editor their activist buddies wrote, in which they attempted to call me out for not knowing what in the world I was talking about (after being pretty happy with my understanding of the situation when I originally wrote a defense of the premise on which the lawsuit was based) were a pretty big waste of paper, ink, and bandwidth - not that I'd expect to hear that admitted.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.