Letters to the Editor: Speaker bans by UC Berkeley law student groups — really?
I am a graduate student at the University of California Berkeley. A little background on me: I am on political science and ethnic studies double degree. I live just down the hill from the law school (which has a population of about 12,000), and I work at the law school (which has a staff of about 500). My brother, a PhD student at UC Berkeley, lives within close proximity to the law school, and I often come over with my friends to drink beer and play sports.
I have been reading the student newspaper on campus and saw this article in that student newspaper about the campus safety, in response to the school’s recent event in which a number of students had been hurt or killed while trying to take down the flagpole and flagdisplay of the campus administration.
In this article entitled “Speaker bans: A dangerous trend on campus” written by the Law Student Association President David Sacks, I read: “To prevent students from showing disapproval of the treatment of students who are in a campus group that represents the administration, the student government passed a resolution condemning the treatment of the student protesters on that day.”
Now, I agree that the students who were in the groups who had been protesting, as part of the administration’s response to the flagpole and flagdisplay incident, should not have been treated by the administration the way they were, but I question whether these students were part of a group. As a graduate student, I have no way of knowing if the individuals at Berkeley who protested on the flagpole incident are part of a student organization. I have no way of knowing whether these students are in any other organization on campus or if they are just college students who happen to fall into the politically conscious category of the groups involved with the protests. In other words, I do not know if these are students who were in any other organization on campus and are just now reacting to the event.
In addition, I am not aware of any student government-sanctioned organization (such as the Black Student Union) that requires students to be on the same page on campus. Also, the Law Student Association, as far
