In the midst of what would otherwise be categorized as a typical finals week here at UCSD, a swarm of users flocked to share a particularly unique video, that of Alexandra Wallace’s rant regarding Asians in the Library. Regardless of the fact that the UCLA student took down the video shortly after putting it up on the Sunday preceding Finals, massive users began uploading and sharing with their friends her racist and seemingly ignorant remarks regarding the character of Asians in her encounters with them. Users immediately began fighting the ignorant words of Wallace with insults, death threats, and an urge to the UCLA administrators to suspend the student. It did not take long for the administration to elicit a response, calling the video “repugnant”, and it did not take long for a Facebook group to emerge encouraging students to report her to the dean and call for her expulsion. Not to mention the fact that her address, email, and phone number would be shared online leading to continuous harassment of the student. Everything that Wallace said were stereotypes, and were mild at best, so to attack her words of ignorance with that of physically coercive words reinforces a fundamental problem in our society today, that political correctness is slowly eroding away our right to freedom of speech. This backlash eventually led to Wallace’s apologies and statement to The Daily Bruin, UCLA’s newspaper: “I made a mistake. My mistake, however, has lead to the harassment of my family, the publishing of my personal information, death threats, and being ostracized from an entire community. Accordingly, for personal safety reasons, I have chosen to no longer attend classes at UCLA.” Is this the new way of dealing with ignorant words in society – harassing it to the extent that those remnants of free speech go away altogether?
Our Founding Fathers could not have possibly predicted the birth of the Internet and the freedoms it would bring in a society invested in the art of communication, but they respected the right of freedom of speech enough to include in the Constitution. Subsequently, whenever a president tries to violate said rights, the degree of respect that president embodies dramatically dwindles. One such case of this would be the Alien and Sedition Acts, passed during the administration of John Adams, which history tells us as blatantly unconstitutional and a violation of free speech altogether. Wallace’s words are in a newer era from Adam’s, where as social networking is on the rise, so are paralleled unique voices on the forefront of the Internet. Now, everyone can essentially publish their own thoughts, instead of relying on traditional media to do so. People have a right to condemn the words of Wallace after hearing them. That is their freedom of speech. But, to say that because her words are so offensive she should be punished would set a dangerous precedent – one where anytime anyone says anything offensive, they should be rebuked for it subsequently. FIRE, a civil rights group dedicated to protecting free speech, would agree with this assessment, arguing that there is no way that Wallace’s words could be anywhere near as deplorable as words credibly threatening to kill someone.
In the end, one could claim Alexandra Wallace has inevitably, lost the battle due to her withdrawing from the University. If she had not, it begs the question of what would have ultimately happened had she chosen to stay. Precedent tells us the answer to that question – where in Davis vs. Monroe County Board of Education, the ruling by the Supreme Court stated the action needs to be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims’ educational experience” to incur a direct punishment from the University. The same reason why the Koala has the right to exist on our campus, and the same reason why the initiators of the “Compton Cook-Out” last year were never punished was because their words never reached this level of severalty. Nevertheless, Wallace has lost, but we all, as a collective whole, have lost with her. With the popularity and emergence of the Internet and in particular social networking sites, all of us should have a right to this new means of conveying our freedom of speech. Wallace’s loss of this right sets a dangerous precedent of what happens when one expresses a dissenting opinion on the Internet. We need to protect this right – only then would we preserving the true faucet of our Founding Father’s intentions in the first amendment, FREEDOM OF SPEECH, regardless of content, regardless of nature, and regardless of political correctness.
Although death threats were extreme, she brought it into herself. Youtube is a public domain. Not to mention, she touted herself as a “political science” major. What kind of poli sci major would be dumb enough to think that it would be okay to post that video/say what she said in a PUBLIC domain?
“We need to protect this right – only then would we preserving the true faucet of our Founding Father’s intentions in the first amendment, FREEDOM OF SPEECH, regardless of content, regardless of nature, and regardless of political correctness.”
The Supreme Court doesn’t think so. Speech that is slanderous/libelous, dangerous (shouting fire in a crowded room to cause chaos), obscene (with some obscure definition I can’t remember), etc is NOT protected. Let’s be honest here. No one sued her. No one says she doesn’t have a right to say what she said (or maybe someone did). But people reacted. Some internet kids had their jollies and so be it. She may be a victim, but she is the catalyst of it all. She made herself a public figure by putting that Youtube video out, she had some responsibility in it.