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From: fair@dual.UUCP (Erik E. Fair)
Newsgroups: net.college
Subject: ``Dartmouth on Trial''
Message-ID: <539@dual.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 26-May-84 04:35:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: dual.539
Posted: Sat May 26 04:35:53 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Jun-84 05:31:30 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Dual Systems, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 72

From the Review & Outlook column (editorials)
of today's (Friday May 25, 1984) Wall Street Journal:

	Consider a trial in which the defendant is accused of a
serious crime, one that puts the defendant's future in jeopardy.
The defendant has no real right to a lawyer; no right to cross-examine
hostile witnesses; no right to compel his own witnesses. What's more,
the committee that functions as prosecutor is also the judge and jury.
Three in one!

	What we have just described is not an 1850 lynching nor a
Kremlin trial of a dissident scientist, but a disciplinary committee
of a major American university. In a microcosm of what seems to be
happening at many such universities, this afternoon Dartmouth College
will try freshman Teresa Polenz for allegedly violating state law by
taping a meeting of the ``Gay Students Association.'' Miss Polenz
attended as a reporter for the Dartmouth Review, then wrote an article
on just what the GSA does with the money it gets from Dartmouth
College.

	Why is Dartmouth College trying Miss Polenz under state code
when the state hasn't yet acted on the case? Perhaps the state read
its own law, which seems to prohibit only covert taping of private
conversations, not public meetings. The seesion in question was widely
announced in a local student newspaper and held in a large conference
room. But Dartmouth is steaming ahead, partly because of pressure from
homosexuals, partly because Miss Polenz works for the Dartmouth
Review.

	For the uninitiated, the Review is one of a spreading number
of independent voices on college capmuses that the liberal academic
establishment regards as heretical. As these opinion organs have
attracted a larger student and alumni following, the war has been
getting rougher and it has become evident that the ``academic
freedom'' so much praised and defended on high-prestige campuses only
applies to right-thinking folks.

	One thing the Review does is question the status of such groups
as the GSA, and we can understand why Dartmouth administrators would
like to avoid such tough questions. Is the group subsidized to promote 
homosexuality? Is it merely there to promote discussion on the issues
of sexual preference? If the latter, what's the harm in reporting on it?
And is it truly seditious for students to ask why such a group is
funded by the college?

	Dartmouth deans argue that Dartmouth has no requirement to be
fair: A private school can do what it pleases. That's questionable as
a legal assertion, and Miss Polenz may test it, if she's punished. It
is beyond the questionable as a moral assertion. The real issue in
today's trial is the skewed vision of free speech and free inquiry
that seems repeatedly to appear in the academic world today.

	*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  

I would be most interested in comments from the folks at `dartvax' and
`dartlib' from any point of view, since they are most certainly closer
to the real situation. While I was at UCB, I spent a year as treasurer
of the Computer Science Undergraduate Association, and so I know what
kinds of politicking goes on in student governments. The most irritating
part of my job was filling out the damn forms for ALL expenditures.
The greatest challenge was protecting my group's budget from the
vagaries of the Associated Students of the University of California
(ASUC, pronounced "a SUCK") Student Senate when budget time came
around in early May.

	besides, net.college was getting boring,

	Erik E. Fair	ucbvax!fair	fair@ucb-arpa.ARPA

	dual!fair@Berkeley.ARPA
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	Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, California