Washington State University president V. Lane Rawlins could use a tutorial on the First Amendment. After student protesters not only disrupted and effectively destroyed a performance of an off-color student-written musical entitled Passion of the Musical, but did so using tickets the university had purchased for them, Rawlins defended the protesters' actions as legitimate expressions of their First Amendment rights: Echoing the Washington State Center for Human Rights' report erroneously declaring the protesters' behavior to be protected expression because the play amounted to a "public forum" in which audience members were "taunted," Rawlins told the campus paper that when the hecklers repeatedly stood up during the performance, shouting about being offended and even threatening members of the audience and case, that that were "exercis[ing] their rights of free speech in a very responsible manner by letting the writer and players know exactly how they felt."

FIRE is all over this, aptly describing Washington State's peculiar concept of free speech as an endorsement of "vigilante censorship" and noting the hypocrisy of an organization that both bankrolls productions of Eve Ensler's provocative Vagina Monologues and subsidizes the student activists who tried to hijack Passion of the Musical. Billed as likely to be "offensive or inflammatory to all audiences," Passion of the Musical does sound like it wasn't for everyone, with its equal opportunity mockery of everything from religion to AIDS to racial and sexual differences. But the audience was not being held captive, and any audience member who didn't like the production was free to leave at any time. There is a difference between choosing not to witness or endorse expression one finds personally offensive and choosing to try to prevent others from witnessing, endorsing, or expressing it. This distinction has, for the moment anyway, been lost at Washington State.

This is even more serious than a free speech issue, as serious as that is. It seems like this university administration is *encouraging* the idea that disruptive behavior, when targeted at groups which *someone* has decided are undesirable, is just fine. There is a slippery slope from this to the kind of political violence that tore the Weimar Republic apart.

Rawlins doesn't just need a tutorial on the First Amendment; he needs extensive study on the history of the 20th centry. Maybe he could resign so that he could spend more time on these things.

"Rawlins doesn't just need a tutorial on the First Amendment; he needs extensive study on the history of the 20th centry. Maybe he could resign so that he could spend more time on these things."

Nah... what Rawlins needs is some sauce for the gander to go with the gravy on his goose.

Normally, I don't support tit-for-tat drama queening (pardon the pun) in cases such as this, responding in kind and explicitly citing the inconsistancy can be the most expedient way to deal with this sort of institutional BS. The next time the unit on campus that commissioned the heckler's moment of drama sponsors something "offensive" those who favor free speech in the long run, may need to "demonstrate" to Rawlins and Sanchez that the heckler's veto can cut both ways.

Yes, it childish and with the dogma that goes with being politically correct will likely be punished at first, but when you are dealing with Highly Intelligent Teenagers with Tenure, sometimes you have to give the oversized brat a spankie.

Also for a similar level of unPC naughtiness - one that the Boss(TM) and I are scheming of doing at our school (faculty with tenure only just to be safe) as soon as we are able. Definitely worth blowing some frequent flying miles and a 4th of July weekend at the midtown W as we did!

http://www.avenueq.com/soundtrack.html (not safe for kids or work without headphones)

The level of "offensiveness" and over-the-top humor with puppets should have the Intellecutally Beautiful theatre crowd storming the stage to kill the performers (especially since they don't get to the George Bush riff until the closing number) but the love it. I imagine the college campus crowd would loathe it if done in their own halls, though.

Without having the text of the actual show to look at, I hesitate to say there's only one traditionally respectable protest, i.e., to get up and leave. If the audience is taunted, I'm not sure if the show may not have set up a "non-traditional" set of expectations. Don Rickles went only so far, but he probably also relished a good rejoinder from the front row. Back-talk from the audience in a comic routine isn't out of bounds. So where do the bounds exist if the show is, as characterized above, taunting the audience? Why can't the audience taunt back in such a situation?

If that is the 'acceptable' behavior level at the U, the president should be subjected to it to see if it is indeed so acceptable.