Theft of Bush posters stifles speech

When I was younger, I never lost an argument to my little brother. His eloquence was hardly a match for my commanding headlock, and my strategy was simple. Shut him up! Stifle dissent! It worked every time—until such complications as socialization and common decency began interfering with my style. With age (and my brother's growth spurt), I started to sense that my most reliable of debating tactics, that of forcing my opponent into silence, was slowing fading from my life. I lamented its exile to the land of dubious childhood memories.

SARAH ENGLAND/YH

I needn't have. On Sat., Oct. 21, some anonymous "pranksters" proved that college students can still employ this juvenile practice. Mere hours after Students for Bush had peppered campus kiosks and dorms with their own Bushisms, a team of crack vandals managed to rip every poster down—including a two-by-30-foot Bush-Cheney banner, originally supported by jumper cables and utility tape. Howard Clark, BK '01, chair of Connecticut Students for Bush, noted that this was actually the second time that his org-anization's posters had been "proactively, systematically all taken down" in the last few weeks. No one has confessed to doing it. Students for Bush was effectively silenced for a while.

Now, I'm not going to bother emphasizing that this sort of vandalism is illegal. I'm not even going to paraphrase John Stuart Mill or quote the Constitution, though that would certainly be applicable. Instead, like a condescending recess monitor, I'll just try to remind these vandals of the most basic and obvious reasons why you can't go around just wrecking other people's stuff. Sorry to drag you back to kindergarten.

First, it's utterly disrespectful. It insults people's time, efforts and opinions. A flyer does not spontaneously spring from a signboard: someone has to design it, pay to have it copied, and trudge around campus posting it. If this sounds trivial, try it sometime. Better yet, repeat the same run three times, as Yale Students for Bush has been forced to do in the last few weeks. Clark remarked that, "If there was a liberal organization that had its posters torn down, you better believe that hell would be raised by students, by the Administration, by everyone." Perhaps Clark has a point. Were a liberal organization targeted, the implicit insult to its members might seem more obvious. Yet upon hearing of last Saturday's vandalism, every student should feel the same ire course through his veins that he would feel if all the Nader posters were destroyed across campus.

Second, trampling on other people's speech tends to be dreadfully counterproductive, as any editor of Light & Truth will be quick to remind you. After a number of their issues were removed from freshman mailboxes during orientation last year, this vehicle for recycled conservative propaganda has received more press, more legitimacy, and more material to bitch about than any other campus publication, most of which people simply ignore. Clark happens not to have plans to stage his own thunderous protest—"we could be making a big deal, but we just don't have time for this"—for which his detractors, so loath to see any Republican propaganda around campus, should feel quite lucky.

Silencing whatever you dislike also sets a dangerous precedent. Both Clark and Lex Paulson, ES '02, president of the Yale College Democrats, have publicly condemned the destruction of the political posters. Yet individuals can (and often will) act independently to attack or retaliate when things become nasty enough. It is perhaps telling that a few Gore posters were also anonymously torn down on Sat., Oct. 21. Such isolated incidents promise to generate an environment of stifling intolerance: a few flyers removed here, a few papers destroyed there...and soon everything with controversy or substance is at risk of being silenced.

Like a distracted parent, the Administration will occasionally step in to denounce the most flagrant of such violations. However, us kids are pretty much home alone, and it's our responsibility to respect each other's property and opinions even when we disagree with them. It's a lesson every elder sibling must learn: silencing a little brother with a hand over his mouth works for a while—but eventually comes back to bite you.

Elisabeth Marshall, JE '02, is a Herald A&E editor.

Back to Opinion...