Pubdate: Thu, 26 Apr 2012
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Copyright: 2012 Boulder Weekly
Contact:  http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Joel Dyer

FIRST AMENDMENT - 1, CU ADMINISTRATION - 0

Administrators at CU are like those people who go to Vegas, lose a 
bunch of money, come back home and tell everyone who will listen that 
they really won, and then either refuse to admit, or are honestly 
incapable of grasping, that they have a serious problem.

For more than 20 years, the annual 4/20 event on the CU campus came 
and went pretty much without incident. There is really no reason to 
think that this year would have been any different had those who run 
the University not decided to make it different, but they did, and it was.

As a result of the administration's failed attempt to stop the 4/20 
protest, it has embarrassed itself along with the institution. Thanks 
to the misguided efforts of its leaders, the University of Colorado 
and all of us in the city of Boulder received far more local and 
national press coverage concerning the police-state they created to 
deny the free speech and peaceful assembly of students and others 
than had ever resulted before due to the 4/20 gathering.

Considering that "negative publicity" was one of the justifications 
given by administrators for their decision to basically suspend the 
First Amendment, I'd say their plan backfired.

This isn't a small thing. These people closed our publicly funded 
campus to all outsiders for the first time ever. Not even during the 
impassioned protests of the Vietnam War - when the very real 
possibility of violence existed - did anyone dare commit such an act 
to throttle First Amendment rights. And if you don't think that this 
year's 4/20 event qualified as a protest worthy of First Amendment 
protection, then I would ask that you look more closely at these 
photos. In its effort to quash what it perceived as nothing more than 
a 4/20 party, those who run the campus succeeded only in transforming 
the event into a far more powerful political rally.

At this year's 4/20 protest, I had the opportunity to observe as a 
passionate young man explained to the police at Norlin Quad why he 
wanted them to step aside and let him and his fellow protestors pass. 
He said it was his school, and he believed that he had the 
Constitutional right to express his views on the grass of his own 
university where he paid tuition. When his request was rejected, he 
then turned to the crowd and encouraged them to remain peaceable as 
he led them in political chants.

It was at that point that the policeman a few inches in front of me 
leaned over to another officer and quietly inferred that he thought 
he should arrest the young man for inciting a riot. Fortunately, 
before such a foolish act on the part of the police could occur - I 
say foolish because this is exactly how actual riots explode from 
otherwise peaceful gatherings - that same young man encouraged the 
crowd to peacefully leave the area in order to avoid conflict. He 
then led the crowd toward a new, police-free piece of grass at the 
quad south of the Duane physics building, where this year's 4/20 
protest finally took place despite all the planning, military-like 
force and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by CU in its failed 
effort to stop it.

Did I mention that this guy the cops wanted to arrest - the same 
young fellow who, from where I was standing, should be credited with 
having prevented what could have become an ugly scene - doesn't even 
smoke pot? Not that it matters when it comes to the First Amendment.

Not only were non-students denied the right to be on this public 
campus regardless of the circumstances for their being there, working 
journalists, including myself, who were unwilling to apply for a 
special bright orange press pass the size of a bullet proof vest and 
issued by the very administration on whose actions we were reporting, 
were also told to stay away and that we could not enter the campus. 
For the 25 years I have been working as a journalist, a valid 
Colorado press pass was always good enough for a breaking story on 
public property.

I realize that had I been willing to request a special media pass 
from the powers that be at CU, it would have been granted to me, but 
that isn't the issue. What if I had been legally on campus because I 
was wearing my administration-issued, orange-jump-suit of a pass? 
Would those same two cops have had that same candid conversation 
about arresting that young man right under my nose if they knew I was 
a reporter? I don't think so. And that's the point. This 
administration believes it has the right to control the message, even 
the message of the media.

We need to ask ourselves, is this shred-the-First-Amendment lesson 
really what we want University students to be learning? Because it is 
what they are learning. Can you imagine another time in CU's storied 
history - this is, after all, the university built around the Dalton 
Trumbo free speech fountain - that the student government would have 
been willing to spend $150,000 to try and dissuade their fellow 
students from gathering together peaceably and speaking their minds 
on an important issue of the day? And worse, while spending that 
money in part to create a Wyclef Jean concert to lure students away 
from the protest, members of student government actually wrote into 
the performer's contract which words he was forbidden to say, another 
first for CU, contractual censorship of a performing artist. What's 
next, firing professors for using certain words or expressing certain 
political views? Oh, wait, CU already has a reputation for doing 
that. Never mind.

As first reported by Boulder Weekly, according to the contract Wyclef 
Jean was forbidden to speak of marijuana or 4/20. To do so, per the 
contract, would constitute a breach, which presumably would cost the 
integrity-challenged singer his 80-grand payday. In a last pathetic 
effort to find someone to not talk about pot with, Wyclef sent his 
brother to the 4/20 protest with a megaphone to try and find out why 
"no one was at Wyclef 's concert." What a waste of $150,000.

But the important question here is, where did these supposed student 
leaders get such a hair-brained, anti-Trumboesque idea? There's an 
easy answer. These students were simply modeling the behavior of 
their school's administration. And it didn't stop there. Other 
equally mis-mentored students encouraged their peers who wanted to 
show solidarity against those who desired the right to participate in 
a 4/20 protest to do so by wearing suits and ties on that day. I'm not joking.

These are college students on the CU campus who believe, because they 
have been taught to believe, that the opposite of someone who wants 
to speak their mind on a political issue, is someone wearing a suit. 
I can only imagine that this is the result of having an institution 
of higher learning led by an oil man and other "businesspersons" who 
have made it clear that they are willing to use the threat of force 
to trample any and all Constitutional rights, including those 
possessed by tuition-paying students whose political positions and/or 
actions are deemed to be ill-suited to corporate fundraising.

They have created an environment in which our leaders of tomorrow 
believe that the censorship of those with whom they disagree is an 
acceptable tool of power. It should send a shiver down the spine of 
everyone, particularly CU alumni.

This near sacrilege that is transpiring in the very heart of our 
community did not rise from its McCarthy-era grave overnight. It has 
been a slow process that has led us back to this point where blatant 
suppression of our rights is not only tolerated, but even held high 
as a desirable aspiration for our young people.

There's no denying it, we live in a post-9/11 world where trading our 
rights for the perception of safety has become commonplace. A little 
racial profiling, a few unwarranted wire taps here and there, a 
couple of snapshots of protest leaders or pesky environmentalists put 
into a file, just in case. It's understandable as long as it's for 
the public good, right?

There is also no denying that today's public universities get far 
more of their money from corporations than from our tax dollars. This 
reality makes trading other people's rights to ensure this flow of 
funding remains steady is paramount for those whose healthy incomes 
depend on it. But no one in the CU administration would ever admit as 
much. So the excuse given for sending a massive police force to 
extinguish a protest over the morality and practicality of current 
marijuana laws is that it is necessitated by the need to protect CU's 
"reputation," and the perceived value of the institution's diplomas. 
The worst part about this invented diploma smokescreen is that some 
of the students, including those in campus government, have actually 
swallowed the whole thing hook, line and sinker.

The CU of today is a corporate-funded institution where those who 
speak their mind will not be tolerated unless their message is one 
acceptable to people who write big checks.

The Adrienne Andersons, Ward Churchills and Phil Mitchells are no 
longer protected by the higher calling of the university experience, 
the calling where students' minds are opened by new ideas and their 
worldviews broadened by exposure to myriad points of view. CU has 
spit these teachers and thinkers and others like them out in recent 
years, all in the name of protecting CU's reputation. But what does 
this even mean? What is all this business about reputations and diploma values?

Berkeley has a particular reputation, and its students are highly 
sought after. NYU has its reputation, and seems to be doing just 
fine. And yes, CU too has a particular reputation, and despite the 
current leadership's statements to the contrary, it's not one of 
which to be ashamed.

CU has always been viewed as a free-spirited place. It has been a 
university where individualism is cherished and where fun that didn't 
hurt anyone is tolerated. It has been a place that historically has 
been willing to speak its mind on all issues of the day. CU students 
have at times hated war, adamantly opposed alphabet organizations 
like the CIA and FBI, fought against military recruiting on campus 
and generally shown a healthy skepticism toward politicians whose 
idea of progress is forcing us all back into an episode of Father Knows Best.

But above all, as symbolized by the Dalton Trumbo fountain at the 
center of the square that has been officially dedicated as a 
free-speech zone, CU has been a caldron of ideas boiling in free 
expression, no matter how disagreeable or far from the mainstream 
they may be. Right or left, pro or con, the First Amendment was at 
the center of CU's reputation.

So you see, CU does have a reputation. The problem is that the 
school's real image isn't anything like this new University of 
Control version that the current folks in charge are rolling out with 
the help of a military-style security force. The truth is, in their 
effort to save a CU reputation that has never existed, administrators 
are destroying and degrading the very real CU reputation that has 
always made it great.

The politically active students who attended or who wanted to attend 
4/20 but were threatened into submission aren't the problem. I 
couldn't help but notice that several of the students who were out in 
front of the protest on 4/20 were also on or near the stage during 
President Obama's visit to CU this week. They are our future leaders, 
thank goodness.

The problem is this group of university leaders and city council 
(with the exception of Lisa Morzel and Macon Cowles), which voted to 
support this military-style action to snuff out political dissent. 
The problem is every member of the Boulder community who has shown 
themselves willing to endorse a police action against people who 
would peacefully assemble to express their political views. How, in 
the city of Boulder, can we sit passively by and watch as CU 
administrators use the threat of physical violence, arrest, jail time 
and even a student's future ability to be employed and support a 
family as the weapons to stomp out the opinions of those with whom 
administrators disagree, or more accurately, believe will hurt the 
school's bottom line.

As a matter of full disclosure, I don't smoke pot. This isn't some 
exercise in pushing my hidden personal agenda. I'm just trying to 
stop this train because I have lived long enough to know that the 
bridge ahead is out. No good can come from the current direction this 
university is heading. If CU administrators are willing to use this 
kind of money and strong-armed tactics to stop something as innocent 
and peaceful as 4/20, what on Earth will they do when a truly 
volatile issue erupts on the scene? I can only hope that they will 
give me their permission to report on it.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom