ACLU head defends imperiled rights of Yalies

On Mon., Apr. 10, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) President Nadine Strossen spoke both at a Calhoun Master's Tea and in front of the Yale Political Union (YPU). Strossen later spoke with the Herald about some recent issues confronting Yalies. Boldly and unhesitatingly, she defended the right of students and Americans to be free of unconstitutional intrusions.

ZOE KONOVALOV/YH ACLU President Nadine Strossen feels that graduate students are entitled to unionize because of the nature of their work.

For example, she thought that there were no grounds for Yale to restrict the posting of student's notes to Versity.com. "The whole reason that the Constitution contains a clause protecting intellectual property is recognizing that kind of property right as an incentive [for creativity]," she said. "On the other hand, you have a countervailing concern, which is a free exchange of ideas and access to information. And, arguably, when someone is giving a public lecture, the idea is put out into the public forum, and one should even encourage a discussion of it." Strossen went so far as to say that a student's notes constitute his own work.

As for another Internet issue—pornography—recently made relevant at Yale by the actions of former Saybrook Master Antonio Lasaga, Strossen firmly believes that there is no justification for child pornography's status as a "thought crime." Citing the successful challenge of the 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act, she said, "Our view is that the only legitimate justification, and it is a legitimate justification, for laws in this area is to protect actual minors from actual exploitation." According to Strossen, child pornography does not inherently fall into this category.

In turn, Lasaga's actions are rumored to be the basis for a change in Yale's Acceptable Use policy for campus computers. The policy now forbids the use of encryption systems not approved by the University, a controversial move. "I think that's a real violation of individual privacy," she lamented. "The Constitution doesn't apply, but prominent educational institutions such as Yale often say that they, as a matter of policy, would respect the standards of privacy and free speech [as if the Constitution did apply]."

Yale students' right to unionize is also facing revision, in light of last week's National Labor Relations Board ruling. "My first reaction when I read the decision was that these are people who are working, who are being called upon to perform sometimes quite menial tasks, and there is no reason why they should have less power to bargain than other workers," she said. Strossen felt that arguing that such work was part of an education was dubious, since just about any job could be considered "educational" in some way without eliminating the need for collective bargaining.

But when it comes to controlling other decisions of a university, Strossen sides with the Administration. The Supreme Court recently ruled that students could not withhold tuition from a university simply because it funded causes they did not believe in, as long as funding was provided fairly to all groups. Stossen likened such policices to having tax money maintain city parks where various groups are free to protest. "The Supreme Court decision was something that the ACLU supported, and the Supreme Court decided this unanimously, so it's a pretty straightforward constitutional principal," she said. "What was being funded was the provision of a public forum where any student organization could apply for funding."

For her, Yale Health Plan's funding of abortions is also a valid policy. "Services should be provided neutrally that are deemed medically important," she said. "I think that if the University did not cover abortion, but it did cover child birth, it would be using its power to [inappropriately] skew decisions."

She also commented on the recent search of minority Ivy League graduates, including one Yale alumnus, by the New York City Police Department's Street Crimes Unit. Strossen noted that one of the ACLU's first racial profiling cases involved a Harvard Law graduate working for the District of Columbia's public defender's office, who had been pulled over on the basis of a racial profile. "Our Constitution requires individualized suspicion, a phrase called probable cause," she said. "Government may not conduct a search of seizure, unless it has probable cause, individualized suspicion that you as an individual have conducted a crime or are about to commit a crime."

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