I’m a little late to the game on this one, but hey, I’ve got a full-time job and have been a bit busy.
Over the weekend I noticed that 1832 and MU Warrior were reporting on this story. The “Reader’s Digest” version of this is as follows: A dental student blogged about a prof, said some negative comments (even though he never named the prof.), and now the dental school has suspended him for violation of their conduct policy even though the school’s ethicist says there was nothing wrong with him posting this.
Honestly, I blogged while I was at Marquette. I said things about some of the BREC profs. that probably were negative. Guess what, the First Amendment guarantees me the right to do that as long as I’m not defaming or saying anything libelous about them. Now I’m sure that Marquette can supersede some rights since it’s a private institution, however, I would think that they could not touch something hosted on a privately owned server (though I am no lawyer).
Anyway, there’s an online petition that’s sponsored by Dr. McAdams, 1832, the CRs, the CDs, and several other groups. I’m linking to it because I think this whole this is a total load of BS and we should support the student’s right to criticize his prof.
If you want more on the story, there’s full coverage from:
Dr. McAdam’s MU Warrior
The Marquette Tribune
1832
JS Online
and even (thanks to Dr.McAdam’s since I don’t read the blog) GOP3.com
In closing, I think all of us, whether we’re current students or alumni like myself, need to make it known to Marquette that Free Speech is an important right and this student should not have been suspended because he exercised it.
-A
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