You belong to an anti-war group that has invited a speaker to campus. The speaker’s presentation is disrupted by members of a conservative student group to the point where police have to be called and arrests made.
But some months later, the university’s Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives sends you a summons listing charges by unnamed students that you and other members of your group have violated the university’s anti-discrimination policy. You are summoned to a meeting that constitutes “official university business” to answer these charges.
The letter informing you of these charges states that you have violated the policy “in some way.” The office refuses repeatedly to list any facts of time, place or circumstance of such violations or how you were involved in any discriminatory acts. They do catalog, however, that you have discriminated against people based on national origin, political persuasion, gender orientation, gender identity, race, religion and … weight.
Finally, the letter also is sent to four other named individuals, two organizations and who knows how many assorted university officials.
If this seems troubling, let’s add one more detail and one correction: the incident is true, but it happened Oct. 4 to two conservative groups who invited a speaker to talk about illegal immigration the previous spring.
The faculty advisers to the two groups, the MSU College Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom, were easily swept up in the allegations. But neither is prone to faint in the face of the hypocrisy of liberals or the violation of due process rights that liberals often seem to care about only when they involve people with whom they agree.
The failure in this matter to include even the most basic safeguards against casual or malicious defamation can be laid at the feet of the Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives.
The further failure to honor the privacy of people subject to such malicious and defamatory accusations is something the university attorneys need to look at and correct. Speaking among friends, isn’t it worthwhile to avoid the inevitable multimillion-dollar defamation suits that the university will just have to swallow hard and pay up on? (Students, of course, will pay the bill later in higher tuition and fees.)
In the meantime, write or call your favorite media outlet, your most trusted legal eagles, or your closest university official, president or trustee to express your opinion. We really, really are about free speech!
And if you have still more time on your hands, ask the university Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives how to file a complaint alleging that someone you don’t like or don’t agree with has violated the university’s anti-discrimination policy.
William Allen
Young Americans for Freedom adviser
Frederick Fico
MSU College Republicans
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