By Jessica Barclay and Mikaela Collins
Over the summer The Cascade received a blatantly bigoted and homophobic letter to the editor in response to an article in the Abbotford News about the vandalism of a UFV instructor’s Pride flag.
The Cascade will publish unedited letters to the editor that are signed and under 200 words long on almost any topic ranging from article critiques to responses regarding ongoing community discussions. We are not, have never been, and will never be, however, a platform for racism, hate speech, and discrimination against the community we are a part of.
The specifics of the letter are not relevant as it will not be published, but generally, it contained homophobic and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, mixed with a cry for freedom of speech and the platform to express a contrary opinion to them.”
The topic of whether or not a university, or in our case a university newspaper, should promote all discourse, hateful or not, in the name of free speech has come up frequently in the media as of late.
Earlier this summer, protests and outrage followed the announcement of controversial speaker Jenn Smith being invited to UBC. Smith is an activist who is currently campaigning against the SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) curriculum recently implemented in B.C. public schools, which was designed to reduce bullying and foster inclusivity.
Despite outcry from various communities at the university, the administration allowed the talk to take place, publishing a statement that said: “Behaviour that obstructs free and full discussion, not only of ideas that are safe and accepted, but of those which may be unpopular or even abhorrent, vitally threatens the integrity of the University’s forum.”
Due in part to this decision, UBC was banned from participating as an institution in the Vancouver Pride Parade, sparking a debate on freedom of expression within universities and among the political left.
The traditional, romantic ideal of a university that is often brought up in discussions of free speech is one where thinkers could say controversial, subversive, and offensive things without much fear of backlash. However, if that university ever truly existed, it was only because these universities were historically filled with only the privileged, and furthermore, the ideas extolled at the time would largely be seen today as progressive for the time, rather than regressive or traditional.
The fact is, in order to maintain a healthy discourse, we sometimes are forced to draw a line where we encounter arguments which are designed to provoke hatred and preclude any reasonable, dialectic response, such as those founded purely on baseless rhetoric.
As cliche as it sounds, freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequence, and we cannot allow an idealized, biased vision of free speech to reiterate marginalization and reinforce hatred.
Freedom of speech protects citizens against censure by the government, not The Cascade. Take hatred elsewhere.
