University of Missouri creating a hostile environment

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14 Dec 2022, 1:50 am

A recent snapchat post about the massing killing of black footballers by a female University of Missouri student has caused an uproar

In the above Snapchat post, the student, Meg Miller, wrote: “If they would have killed 4 more n----- we would have had the whole week off,” followed by crying laughing emojis.

Students at the University have called for expulsion, however the University president was slow to respond prompting the University adminstrators to be tagged on twitter and the story going viral.

Following exposure the university president Mun Choi said they will investigate the slurs. Students were frustrated by the apparent lack of response by university adminstrators before the viral post.

A curious byproduct of the racist slurs is that the student in question, Meg Miller was the past president of the Univ of Missouri chapter of Turning Point USA.Screenshots of Miller’s Instagram post showed that her bio stated she was “unapologetically conservative,” a “second amendment enthusiast” and “pro-life advocate.”

One of Miller’s previous posts, shared widely on social media, shows her posing with Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager acquitted of criminal charges in the fatal shooting of two men and the wounding of another during a Wisconsin protest in 2020 over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man.

The photo included the hashtags “#fangirlmoment” and “#gunrightsarewomensrights.” In another post, Miller is shown hunting, posed next to a deer, with the caption, “pulled a rittenhouse.”

Members of the university community were unaware that the university permits the far right Turning Point USA to operate ob campus who among other things espouse the "Great Replacement Theory"
https://www.counterextremism.com/conten ... gLTr_D_BwE

Questions are being asked why the Universty permits this organisation to operate in University grounds?

Miller has gone to ground, she has resigned her position with Turning Point and deleted all her social media. Typical MAGA scum.

ASPartOfMe
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14 Dec 2022, 4:07 am

If this was a private University there would be no free speech issue with the university expelling Ms. Miller but the University of Missouri is a public university so the issue of government censorship becomes involved.

Speech on Campus - American Civil Liberties Union

Quote:

The First Amendment does not require the government to provide a platform to anyone, but it does prohibit the government from discriminating against speech on the basis of the speaker’s viewpoint. For example, public colleges and universities have no obligation to fund student publications; however, the Supreme Court has held that if a public university voluntarily provides these funds, it cannot selectively withhold them from particular student publications simply because they advocate a controversial point of view.

I don't know if Mizzou funds campus organizations, but sans that the university is apparently under no obligation to give Turning Point a platform by such as recognizing them as an official campus organization.

Quote:

To be clear, the First Amendment does not protect behavior on campus that crosses the line into targeted harassment or threats, or that creates a pervasively hostile environment for vulnerable students. But merely offensive or bigoted speech does not rise to that level, and determining when conduct crosses that line is a legal question that requires examination on a case-by-case basis.

What Ms. Miller did was make a "joke" with very apparently malevolent intent. This did not come close to creating a pervasively hostile environment. I am not sure "pervasively hostile atmosphere" passes constitutional muster as it does not represent an imminent threat.

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14 Dec 2022, 5:08 am

The next step is the university should expel her from the campus. Her comments are serious/dangerous.
Her current attempt to hide suggests she knows she's guilty.

The university adminstrators using robo recordings claiming they will get back to students is also innapropriate. Serious issues on campus can't be put into a queue for months.

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14 Dec 2022, 5:42 am

why does this nation produce so many of those antisocial types?

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14 Dec 2022, 1:18 pm

cyberdad wrote:

As noted above there will be a free speech issue. There is probably a campus speech code she violated. The issue will go to court, a lot of these speech codes are getting thrown out by courts.

So if they move to expel her it will cost the university a lot of time and money. This process will mean her posts will be publicized more often and over a longer period of time thus possibly giving more opportunity for people to be triggered by the post or inspired to do something bad.

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14 Dec 2022, 1:42 pm

This stuff. Is just very very sad , all things considered that this sort of stuff was allowed to be ongoing at
A so called Institution of higher learning ….. am thinking entire faculty at Missouri Uni there , needs to be held too account . It is a place To learn , ….not to foment hostile factions in our Population.

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14 Dec 2022, 4:57 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:

So if they move to expel her it will cost the university a lot of time and money. This process will mean her posts will be publicized more often and over a longer period of time thus possibly giving more opportunity for people to be triggered by the post or inspired to do something bad.

The University and Ms Miller can't hide behind free speech. My understanding is university campuses operate under different laws so hence the title of this thread. Under the university charter (and this is the same with every university in the western world) they are committed to creating a safe environment for all their students. This overrides state/federal laws about free speech. Therefore hate-speech is considered a breach of these campus laws (illustrated by the letters sent from black students to the University president).

University president Mun Choi is going through the motions because he has to. The investigation is to determine if Ms Miller's post was considered hate speech (which it clearly is). Ms Miller's deleted social media
a) celebrated the mass killing of black students
b) promoted murderer Kyle Rittenhouse
c) promoted her own support for us of firearms

She is clearly a threat to other students of colour. I would imagine the presence of Turning Point USA should also be investigated as they are (in my view) promoting racist ideology that attracts these type of despicable individuals likes moths to a flame.

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14 Dec 2022, 5:04 pm

We should consider making hate speech a criminal offense, like in Sweden.

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cyberdad
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14 Dec 2022, 5:07 pm

Tim_Tex wrote:

We should consider making hate speech a criminal offense, like in Sweden.

Its also a criminal offense here in Australia. I am almost 100% sure though that there are previous examples of US colleges expelling students and staff who post hate speech.

I mean it's so obvious what the student intended when she posted this.

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14 Dec 2022, 6:09 pm

Tim_Tex wrote:

We should consider making hate speech a criminal offense, like in Sweden.

You would need to pass a constitutional amendment.
Does the First Amendment Protect Hate Speech?

Quote:

The First Amendment guarantees the right to freedom of expression. Many Americans—from college students to journalists to legal scholars—believe that guarantee shouldn’t apply to hate speech. As they argue, hate speech tramples on the constitutional rights of its targets by insulting, threatening, or silencing them based on characteristics that are protected under antidiscrimination laws (such as ethnicity, religion, gender, or disability). After all, the U.S. Supreme Court has carved out First Amendment exceptions for certain kinds of particularly dangerous or harmful speech. But the Court hasn’t recognized an exception for hate speech, unless it falls under one of the other kinds of unprotected expression.

Hate Speech and Fighting Words
In 1942, the Supreme Court said that the First Amendment doesn’t protect “fighting words,” or statements that “by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942)). In later decisions, the Court narrowed this exception by honing in on the second part of the definition: direct, personal insults that are so offensive they’re likely to provoke their specific target to respond immediately with violence. The Court has also said that laws can’t prohibit only some types of fighting words, like those based on racial bias (R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul 505 U.S. 377 (1992)).

But what about the first part of the Chaplinsky definition of fighting words—statements that are inherently harmful? Courts have generally found that the First Amendment protects speech if it causes only emotional injury, no matter how offensive it is. In one case, the father of a military veteran sued the Westboro Baptist Church for emotional distress after church members picketed his son’s funeral with hateful, antigay signs. The Supreme Court found that the First Amendment protected the picketing. The Court focused on the fact that the signs (like “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers”) mainly addressed public issues.

Speech Codes at Schools and Colleges
Courts have regularly struck down speech codes at public colleges and universities that barred racist or discriminatory comments. Usually, the courts found that the policies were too broad (meaning that they restricted too much expression that should be protected) or vague (meaning that students couldn’t predict what kinds of statements would be covered).

Threatening Expressions of Hate
The First Amendment doesn’t give people the right to make direct, personal threats of immediate violence. This can include intimidating symbolic actions like burning a cross that are meant to make specific victims fear for their lives, even if the cross-burners don’t actually plan to carry through with the threat (Virginia v. Black,538 U.S. 343 (2003)).

Free Speech and Disparaging Trademarks
In a U.S. Supreme Court that dealt with free speech in the context of trademark law, the Court struck down a federal law prohibiting registration of trademarks that may disparage any "persons, living or dead." An Asian rock group challenged the denial of a trademark for its name, "The Slants" which it had chosen to "reclaim" the derogatory term for people of Asian descent. The Supreme Court said the law was an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights. (Matal v. Tam 137 S.Ct. 1744 (2017).)

This is not the same situation as a law being passed guaranteeing the right to an abortion. In the Dobbs decision SCOTUS is saying abortion is not a constitutional right. SCOTUS has repeatedly said hate speech is a constitutional right.

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15 Dec 2022, 2:40 am

Looks like Ms Miller will be unlikely to grace the corridors of Missouri Univ based on previous cases
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/us/e ... ebate.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/12/us/s ... peech.html

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15 Dec 2022, 8:35 am

cyberdad wrote:

You are posting old cases that are under a paywall.. At lot of these hate speech rules have been tossed. This SCOTUS will be very eager to toss expulsions due the these speech codes.

cyberdad wrote:

Tim_Tex wrote:

We should consider making hate speech a criminal offense, like in Sweden.

America is a big time outlier in this regard.

cyberdad wrote:

The constitution overrides all laws.

cyberdad wrote:

She is clearly a threat to other students of colour. I would imagine the presence of Turning Point USA should also be investigated as they are (in my view) promoting racist ideology that attracts these type of despicable individuals likes moths to a flame.

She is possibly a potential threat. If one racist student armed with only a computer is a threat the blame is not totally on that student.

We are not supposed to be prosecuting people for things they might do.

As far as Turning Point goes they can and should be investigated but unless evidence is obtained that they committed a crime or are going to commit one nothing can be done.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 15 Dec 2022, 9:00 am, edited 5 times in total.

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15 Dec 2022, 8:37 am

i wish i could send our present SCOTUS out to the phantom zone, or at least the destructive 6 in it.

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15 Dec 2022, 8:46 am

Jakki wrote:

The entire faculty should not be blamed for the actions of one student.

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15 Dec 2022, 2:45 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:

Jakki wrote:

The entire faculty should not be blamed for the actions of one student.

Normally would agree with you but apparently , this situation from my reading of it has existed for awhile there and many students had already complained about it . At what point should enough be enough ? Or were all or most of the faculty not aware of what was happening at their own workplace / Uni. As a ongoing situation .?

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15 Dec 2022, 3:51 pm

Could laws like this be enacted here?:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/norwegian-actress-tonje-gjevjon-faces-up-to-3-years-in-prison-for-saying-men-cannot-be-lesbians/ar-AA15k1uO?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=1860aab755df47ef85f4df130bcf7f0c

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