As an organization that values First Amendment rights to the utmost degree, it is not often that we would criticize people for exercising them. But last week, a flier distributed through campus advertising a T-shirt emblazoned with a pair of wolverines engaged in crude sexual acts and bearing the phrase "Wolverines Pack Fudge" showed us how lost our founding fathers' principles are today.
Although the spirit of the First Amendment urges us all to establish our own voices, using speech freely as a foundation for democracy, it is still important to exercise good judgment in doing so.
Not just University of Michigan students, not just homosexuals, but everyone in our community should be offended by this speech. It is inappropriate, immature and hurtful.
In today's society, it is hard to imagine that such ignorance is still found, oftentimes in abundance.
Although the shirts were meant to offend U-M students, the creators have succeeded in offending MSU students, too. As representatives of MSU, we all should do our best to uphold its honor, tradition and integrity.
However, it is not our impression that the creators intentionally meant to harm the gay community through the content or distribution of the T-shirts despite doing so during last week's National Coming Out Days.
The gay community is often the target for harassment and ridicule, and the creators of this shirt should be more sensitive.
Telecommunication, information studies and media senior Joseph Doss is hosting a Web site that aids in distributing the shirts.
In a statement on his site, Doss said the only ignorance comes in attributing the term "packs fudge" to homosexuality, when it could also be used to describe heterosexual anal sex.
But in our culture, the term is unfortunately much more loaded than to simply be a creative description of a sex act.
The creators of the shirts should expect to be criticized, but the criticism shouldn't just come from the LBGT community - it should come from all areas of MSU.
The court of public opinion should find it to be offensive and ignorant. It should be made apparent to the creators of these shirts that this is not acceptable at MSU.
