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From: bnapl@burdvax.UUCP (Tom Albrecht)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.misc,net.motss
Subject: Re: Corrupting youth: Conservative [sic.] Campus Tabloids
Message-ID: <1748@burdvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Oct-84 21:42:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: burdvax.1748
Posted: Mon Oct 22 21:42:03 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Oct-84 02:46:30 EDT
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Organization: Burroughs Corp. - SDG/Devon
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	Last spring, Teresa Polenz, a Dartmouth freshman and reporter
for the feisty "Dartmouth Review", attended a meeting of the Dartmouth
Gay Students' Association with a tape recorder in her handbag.  In
the entirely sober article she subsequently wrote, she mentioned
the names only of the GSA officers, which are a matter of public
record.  The GSA meeting had been advertised publicly and it took
place on college property.  The organization is funded by the
college, i.e., in part by Teresa Polenz's own tuition money.  There
were no particular scandals at the meeting, except that heterosexuals
were referred to as "perverts."

	But all hell broke loose.  The college initially moved to
bring Teresa Polenz before its disciplinary committee, but backed
off when the New Hampshire attorney general - and this is a genuinely
remarkable political development - moved to prosecute her under a New
Hampshire wiretapping statute.  After a four-month investigation -
the attorney general's office describes it as an "exhaustive
review" - the state has dropped the case.  In point of fact, according
to Miss Polenz's attorney, Laurence Silberman, former U.S. Deputy
Attorney General, the prosecution never had a chance.  The statute is
so broadly drawn that it is probably unconstitutional; its
intent was to prevent the recording of conversations among prison
inmates; and it has no application to the Polenz case.  Why the state
attorney general wasted the taxpayer's money in this feckless
enterprise remains an interesting question, to be further explored.

	The whole episode possesses large implications.  Teresa Polenz
was challenging the symbolic legitimacy of college funding for a
gay support group.  She also believed that she had every right
to attend a meeting on college property and, as a journalist, to
report on it.  The Dartmouth faculty apparently disagreed,
voting overwhelmingly to condemn the "Review" in the wake of the
Polenz affair.  At the heart of the matter is the issue of the status
of "gayness."  The Left position appears to be that homosexuality is
just an alternative sexual style, certainly no worse than "straight"
preferences.  Indeed, the homosexual, having qualified for
Victim Status, is privileged.  The faculty vote reflects the ideology.

	The climb-down of the New Hampshire attorney general puts the
ball back in the court of the Dartmouth administration.  It is
under faculty pressure to move against Miss Polenz through its
disciplinary arm, but she does not appear to have broken any college
regulations.  The faculty Left would like to throw her out of
school, but on freedom-of-the-press grounds she has the support of, for
example, the American Civil Liberties Union.

	The Gay Students' Association should meet in a
private house.  But that is precisely what they do not want to
do.  They want secret meetings and maximum public legitimacy.



		The National Review
		November 2, 1984
		reprinted without permission


-- 
Tom Albrecht 		Burroughs Corp.
			...{presby|psuvax|sdcrdcf}!burdvax!bnapl