Author Topic: Athletes Forcing Change  (Read 94720 times)

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Offline michigancat

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #50 on: June 28, 2020, 11:36:11 AM »
KSO members can relax. Football won’t be canceled because of all this.

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When he first saw McNeil’s offensive tweet, Alexander said his initial reaction wasn’t nuanced.

“It was, ‘Yo, you gotta go. You gotta leave K-State,’” Alexander said.

Alexander’s views slowly have shifted.

“In talking with the president, talking with the student body, talking to educated people, they’re telling us about the First Amendment,” he said. “We’re all grown. We’re all mature. We know that he won’t leave. We know that he can’t get kicked out of Kansas State just for that. ... We’re mature enough to understand that he can’t get kicked out of Kansas State just for that comment. We’re just wanting (K-State) to say, ‘We don’t respect his point of view.’”

https://themercury.com/news/local/how-kansas-state-football-players-vow-to-not-play-practice-or-meet-came-to-be/article_54f4b04b-7c49-5533-97b5-e28b12f2fbbe.html
Wait so we sent all the players home during the covid break???? To Texas???

Gah

Also they played their hand too soon, but that's overall an encouraging read.

Offline Pete

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #51 on: June 28, 2020, 12:41:42 PM »
I knew I should have gone to KU.


Offline star seed 7

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #53 on: June 28, 2020, 02:30:22 PM »
so what other government services should we not allow racists access to?
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Offline MakeItRain

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #54 on: June 28, 2020, 02:37:06 PM »
Pretty rough ridin' stupid.  They want a policy put in place to be able to dismiss a person from the university for being disrespectful. What a clown show.

Just go beat up this individual piece of crap person who attends the university and said stuff on Twitter and move on.

easy for you to dismiss this guy as just being "disrespectful".

oddly enough, beating up this guy would CLEARLY be grounds for dismissal
No, I’m talking specifically about the statement from the athletes. “We are demanding that Kansas State University put a policy in place that allows a student to be dismissed for displaying racist, threatening or disrespectful actions toward a student or groups of students.”

You can get expelled for sexual harassment, how is a policy.banning race based harassment any different? Like with Gundy and the OAN shirt, why are we making the assumption that their knowledge of this crap head is limited to the one tweet?

Offline star seed 7

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #55 on: June 28, 2020, 02:49:12 PM »
Harassment is an acceptable standard for expulsion, but so far all mentions to it i've seen have been of the "so I heard he also harassed and doxxed people" variety. Is there any actual proof other than rumor? (fwiw I think it's very likely that the harassment part is true)
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Offline michigancat

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #56 on: June 28, 2020, 02:52:12 PM »


Harassment is an acceptable standard for expulsion, but so far all mentions to it i've seen have been of the "so I heard he also harassed and doxxed people" variety. Is there any actual proof other than rumor? (fwiw I think it's very likely that the harassment part is true)

It can easily be argued that his tweet was harassment (especially combined with his history)

Offline star seed 7

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #57 on: June 28, 2020, 02:52:38 PM »
Well I very much disagree there
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Offline michigancat

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #58 on: June 28, 2020, 02:56:09 PM »
Well I very much disagree there
The EEOC explicitly calls out offensive jokes. I realize the EEOC doesn't have jurisdiction here but it's a pretty clear definition.

https://www.eeoc.gov/harassment

Offline MakeItRain

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #59 on: June 28, 2020, 03:01:38 PM »
Well I very much disagree there
The EEOC explicitly calls out offensive jokes. I realize the EEOC doesn't have jurisdiction here but it's a pretty clear definition.

https://www.eeoc.gov/harassment

Yeah, weird stance here. There are many examples of "jokes" that are considered harassment. You can't make a constitutional shelter out of something being a joke. If that were the case you could never justify harassment.

Offline MakeItRain

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #60 on: June 28, 2020, 03:03:17 PM »
Also that wasn't in any way shape or form a joke. That's what his defenders are saying in retrospect. He very clearly meant that.

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #61 on: June 28, 2020, 03:16:10 PM »
You're making a gigantic reach if you are classifying that tweet as harassment.

If I tweet out something derogatory about Jesus, am I harrasing Christians?
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Offline michigancat

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #62 on: June 28, 2020, 03:22:14 PM »
You're making a gigantic reach if you are classifying that tweet as harassment.

If I tweet out something derogatory about Jesus, am I harrasing Christians?

Yes, depending on the context. But I think you know it's different when you're targeting the group with power.

Offline eastcat

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #63 on: June 28, 2020, 03:25:31 PM »
Why was my post deleted?

Offline michigancat

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #64 on: June 28, 2020, 03:25:34 PM »


You're making a gigantic reach if you are classifying that tweet as harassment.

If I tweet out something derogatory about Jesus, am I harrasing Christians?

I'd guess the idea would be to expand the behavior to include things outside of that tweet as well.

Yes, and also to consider the environment we're in. If he'd made the same joke about someone like say, Prince, no one would have noticed. It was very targeted and part of a pattern.

Offline eastcat

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #65 on: June 28, 2020, 03:27:43 PM »


You're making a gigantic reach if you are classifying that tweet as harassment.

If I tweet out something derogatory about Jesus, am I harrasing Christians?

I'd guess the idea would be to expand the behavior to include things outside of that tweet as well.

Yes, and also to consider the environment we're in. If he'd made the same joke about someone like say, Prince, no one would have noticed. It was very targeted and part of a pattern.

You can interpret almost anything as a pattern. Incredibly short sighted precedence to set.

Offline Spracne

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #66 on: June 28, 2020, 03:58:32 PM »
You can't just take EEOC guidance and apply it to private citizens outside of the employment context. Pertaining to private conduct, harassment means something akin to criminal harassment in order to not be protected speech. And if you surveyed First Amendment case law in the U.S., you would see that you can't harass anyone without directing your harassment at a specific individual. Merely "harassing" a group of people (Blacks, Jews, etc.) in an abstract sense is not harassment. Look up Brandenberg v. Ohio, Virginia v. Black (Ginsburg's opinion on cross burning), and Nat'l Socialist Party of Am. v. Village of Skokie. So-called "liberal" and "conservative" justices alike tend to be on the same page when it comes to freedom of expression.

On the other hand, despite language such as "students do not surrender their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate," it is a fact that the Supreme Court has endorsed limiting the constitutional rights of students when classroom conduct causes a "substantial disruption" to classroom learning. However, those cases all deal with high school and below. To my knowledge, it has never been applied at the university level, where professors enjoy almost unlimited academic freedom. College campuses have long been considered the classic "public forum" where ideas can be exchanged without fear of sanction or censure. "Viewpoint discrimination," i.e. policies that target the content of speech, is particularly suspect. Some helpful background reading: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/991/campus-speech-codes

Any policy that could apply to this bonehead's tweet would almost certainly be unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, as the standard of review would be strict scrutiny, that is, the policy must be "narrowly tailored" to achieve a "compelling government interest." Narrow tailoring is a very high threshold, particularly in free speech law. The school will have to disclose who else it has punished under the policy (if anyone), and the student will point out thousands of rude, distasteful, disrespectful, harrassing etc. social media posts of other students and ask why the policy was not applied to them. The student will be able to make a pretty compelling case that he is being singled out and targeted merely for voicing an unpopular viewpoint (and one that wasn't directed towards anyone other than a dead man).

Some other perspectives:

John Stuart Mill, from On Liberty:

Quote
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion may be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds

And Justices Brandeis and Holmes (Oliver Wendell) concurring in Whitney v. California:

Quote
Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
* * *
Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law—the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppressions of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women**. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.
* * *
Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression. Such must be the rule if authority is to be reconciled with freedom. Such, in my opinion, is the command of the Constitution . . .

**highlighting this sentence because it has always stuck with me, and I've never read a 6 word sentence as powerful.

Offline catastrophe

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #67 on: June 28, 2020, 04:11:39 PM »
TIL you can say “I want to kill all n-words” and apparently universities cannot do anything about it because it’s not directed to an individual.

Offline michigancat

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #68 on: June 28, 2020, 04:12:38 PM »
To be clear, I don't think he should receive criminal punishment for the tweet.

Offline wetwillie

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #69 on: June 28, 2020, 04:13:23 PM »
Lol did not read
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Offline Spracne

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #70 on: June 28, 2020, 04:17:29 PM »
TIL you can say “I want to kill all n-words” and apparently universities cannot do anything about it because it’s not directed to an individual.

I know you're better than that, honky.

Offline GregKSU1027

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #71 on: June 28, 2020, 04:22:02 PM »
https://twitter.com/bothwellnathan/status/1277339910941421569?s=21

Wow I wonder if the doxxing is real? Huh...


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Offline catastrophe

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Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #72 on: June 28, 2020, 04:24:42 PM »
TIL you can say “I want to kill all n-words” and apparently universities cannot do anything about it because it’s not directed to an individual.

I know you're better than that, honky.

Is that not the takeaway? Surely individuals can feel threatened even if the language doesn’t single them out. If that’s true, I don’t see it supported from the standards you’ve laid out.

I don’t think the George Floyd tweet rises all the way to that level, but I can certainly understand why other black students would be extremely uncomfortable with a statement from a white ardent Trump supporter mocking a murdered black man.

Offline Spracne

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #73 on: June 28, 2020, 04:40:37 PM »
https://twitter.com/bothwellnathan/status/1277339910941421569?s=21

Wow I wonder if the doxxing is real? Huh...


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He's already setting up his case. "If this policy is legit, why is it OK for these people to actually threaten a fellow student without being subjected to the same policy? Is it because you simply don't like what I had to say?"

@catastrophe, yes, individuals can feel threatened with being called out by name. I thought it was a crass, classless tweet, myself. But that is not enough to justify state action. Nor do I think any reasonable person would interpret it as a threat. The whole problem is that, if you're going to adopt a policy that purports to target this kind of speech, you either have to use it or you lose it. You can't apply it arbitrarily whenever you feel the University is getting bad press.

If a school wants to adopt (and keep) such a policy, it has to be uniformly applied. That, in and of itself, would be enough to give school administrators fits.

My guess would be that what ends up happening is the University has some strong words against this student but concludes that they can't justly expel him based on current campus policies, but they are in the process of rewriting those policies to address issues like this in the future.

Offline michigancat

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Re: Athletes Forcing Change
« Reply #74 on: June 28, 2020, 04:44:05 PM »
My guess would be that what ends up happening is the University has some strong words against this student but concludes that they can't justly expel him based on current campus policies, but they are in the process of rewriting those policies to address issues like this in the future.

Which happens to be what the players asked for