I’ve heard that when you make a decision, you should consider: “How would I feel if this were on the front page of the newspaper?”
Unfortunately, I think this guy probably prefers “Officer Can’t Grasp Concept of Free Speech; Is Total Square” to “Officer Allows Student To Draw Cock and Balls.”
That was not a penis, and shame on the Ivory Tower, Liberal Elite KampusKops for crushing the Free Speech Rights of a Trump supporter!
Interesting that the only other “wrong” examples the officer gives are both hate speech. Like a penis is somehow as bad as a swastika. Almost as though he believes that the penis is evil?
Given the rape culture on college campuses, I can see where such a drawing (especially if made by a fraternity jock) could be viewed as sexually threatening. That having been said, if it’s called a “free speech ball”, anything should be allowed regardless of how offensive it might be.
My kids draw penises on just about anything they can. All their snowmen also have, or simply are, giant penises. It seems somehow hilarious to them. I dunno, the kids of today.
Bravo and/or brava! Both for parenting and for the turn of phrase.
Especially boys in grades 7-9. They are so preoccupied with the phallus!
Coincidentally “The Ivory Tower” is also the nickname my wife uses to refer to my penis.
(At least I like to think it would be if it met the various qualifications.)
[quote=“MBrody, post:5, topic:76835”]anything should be allowed regardless of how offensive it might be.[/quote]That sounds like a challenge.
Yep. If you listen to the officer, basically he’s saying that he knows that he’s going to get an angry phone call about this, and he’s going to have to investigate it as a hate crime, and he’d really rather be doing something else. So he’s asking to have “at least the giant penis” scribbled over.
University of Delaware, being a large land-grant US University, does indeed have a rape problem, and it also has the usual problem of angry student groups that believe only their point of view is valid, and that all other points of view should be vigorously suppressed. I’m on the side of the free speech guys here (although they may very well be misogynist agitators, for all I know) but I do see where the cop is coming from.
When I was a lad, the UD cops were students with billy clubs, not armed officers with the full weight of the law behind them. I knew guys who paid their way through college by selling dope and being UD cops. Sadly, the “pro” cops are not really any better than the amateurs were… my opinion, of course, based only on my own personal experiences and not on rigorous study.
I don’t even feel like the cop was “ordering” him to scribble over it. I feel like he was more pleading for him to do it. akin to “Man…help me out here. just scribble over that for me, because all its going to do is get us all in trouble.”
I feel like he is right here. Is it ironic? Absolutely. But it definitely feels like the safer bet and road to less drama.
I can see it now that some liberal feminist extremist walks by and causes a stink that the drawing of a penis is a rape trigger and that the campus is supposed to be her safe space and this violates her civil liberties to not be harassed and maligned by illustrations of male sexual power in a public space.
So yeah. scribble over it. Move on. He wasn’t asking too much IMO.
It was a challenge, until this guy decided the limit for offensiveness is the very idea that other humans have genitals.
“Especially the penis – that one is a BIG ONE.”
You guessed it. Two boys. One in Grade 7 and the other in Grade 9.
I wish I could assure you they’d grow out of it.
Eh, let’s all remember that free speech comes with some pretty well understood boundaries everywhere in the US. and I would expect that those boundaries are even tighter on a college campus. Hate speech is not tolerated, threats are not OK, Libel etc. Although the officer started off referring to matters of hate or threats, he did then go on to refer to the campus sexual harassment policy, which one would not have to stretch too far to imagine would cover depictions of genitalia.
If it were me that was in possession of such a beach ball, I might respectfully disagree with the officer and let him write me up to be taken to court. Or I might cover up the penis as a lesson in the limits to free speech.
I kind of cheated because I’m a former teacher.
I think it’s funny and I even asked the male guidance teacher if he did this when he was young (nope). My female students were similarly amused. It only became a slight issue when we were going through accreditation and expecting visitors from our district and throughout the state. So I had a chat with the class and I must have used the word penis 20 times. We all laughed and voilà , no more penises!
Fair enough, but given the existing problems, you don’t have to be a liberal feminist extremist to be freaked out about campus rape in the USA. It’s a serious, ongoing problem.
BTW, the University of Delaware is within the jurisdiction of the Newark Police as well as the Delaware State Police, who are supposed to handle any real crime. It’s pretty much this guy’s job to deal with complaints about things like unsavory beach balls on the mall, no matter how tedious that may be for him.
As is often the nature of free speech.
