Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Stout Wake-Up Call

Administrators at the University of Wisconsin-Stout have reversed their decision to remove posters from a professor's office door, which I wrote about yesterday.

Their explanation remains heavy on weasel-inity, though, as the statement says the posters were not removed to censor the professor but because "of legitimate concern for the violent messages contained in each poster and the belief that the posters ran counter to our primary mission to provide a campus that is welcoming, safe and secure."

The Adam Baldwin piece I mentioned in the PS to the last post pointed out that posters of katana-wielding Uma Thurman with the logo "Kill the Bill," a takeoff of Thurman's Kill Bill role used to protest a Wisconsin law limiting public sector collective bargaining, were super neato-keen in the eyes of the campus cops who removed the more recent posters. Which means that the university administrators are still doofuses, because the proper response to being called out on their actions should have been, "Yeah, you're right. Those were pretty dumb things to do."

The statement also says Stout will host some workshops and forums on the First Amendment. I've got a a pretty good idea of who should attend, sit on the front row, take copious notes and then be quizzed about the matter afterwards.

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