Back on August 25, the University of Maine hosted its annual freshman-welcoming “Maine Hello” event in which roughly 2,500 first-year students arrived on campus.
However, as students and their families were driving through town, they were met by banners hanging from apartment buildings containing messages such as “Honk If She’s 18” and “Daughter Drop Off,” according to Maine Campus.
University and local police received several complaints about the banners, which led to officers visiting the offending apartments.
The apartment occupants complied with the officers’ requests to remove the signs, although those who hung the “Honk If She’s 18” held out the longest: After refusing campus police and UM Dean Robert Dana’s appeals to take down their banner, they eventually complied when (Orono) city police got involved.
But that wasn’t all. Eventually the perpetually aggrieved “studies” crowd joined the fray, decrying the alleged “offensive promotions of rape culture”:
“The banners were seen by thousands of incoming first years and their families,” Sam Saucier, a fourth-year student in Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, said. “The fact that those students felt it was okay to put the banners up demonstrates the larger systemic problems of the campus that make students rightfully feel unsafe.”
Saucier, also the co-founder of the new Women’s Resource Center on campus [see here], referred to the hanging of the banners as “the sort of action that normalizes misogyny.”
Faculty and students got involved, some taking the opportunity to have an open conversation about what speech like this really means. “We’ve never had a larger dialogue,” Susan Gardner, director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGS) and the Rising Tide Center for Gender Equity at UMaine, said. “Let’s dig deeper about why people are offended. What does it symbolize? There’s a lot of stuff packed up underneath.”
And Gardner did just that, holding a panel discussion of the banner controversy yesterday afternoon. “Our current political climate provides a doorway for this conversation,” she said.
Dean Dana informed the apartment dwellers that while their banners did not “break any laws,” they did violate the student of code of conduct. To which a commenter to the article takes issue: “The First Amendment trumps the student conduct code. Not to mention the conduct code does not apply to speech […] that is off campus and not under the auspices of the university. The university’s own rules say so.”
(Three years ago, Dana admitted to NPR that, regarding accusations of sexual assault, “some rush to judgment is inevitable” because schools “are getting very jittery about it” — meaning federal allegations of “going soft” on the issue.)
I wonder how many of those traveling past the banners thought they were funny and got a chuckle? Any takers they were (a lot) more numerous than Ms. Saucier and crew?
When I had dropped my then-freshman daughter off at college several years ago, we rolled past a frat house which featured signs saying ‘Thank You for Your Daughters” and “Dads Drink Free.” We thought they were hilarious and enjoyed a good guffaw.
What do so many folks take everything so seriously anymore?
MORE: Activists mad after Harvard says all-male clubs aren’t being punished for rape culture
MORE: After saying ‘rape culture isn’t real,’ newly elected student senator shamed into resigning
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