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Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

From Wikipedia:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal, variously translated as ?Who watches the watchmen??, ?Who watches the watchers??, ?Who will guard the guards?? ?Who shall watch the watchers themselves??....

The essential problem was posed by Plato in the Republic, his work on government and morality. The perfect society as described by Socrates, the main character of the work (see Socratic dialogue), relies on laborers, slaves and tradesmen. The guardian class is to protect the city. The question is put to Socrates, ?Who will guard the guardians?? or, ?Who will protect us against the protectors?? ....

The citizens of Michigan rose up in 2006 to protect their own civil rights by passing Proposition 2, prohibiting their state from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any individual based on race. They still, however, are in desperate need of protection from those appointed to watch over those rights, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, and even from those whose task is to watch over the watchers, the press.

First, some background. Several years ago, as discussed here, the Young Republican Club at Michigan?s Grand Valley State University held a satirical but politically pointed bake sale to highlight the unfairness of racial preferences, offering cupcakes blacks and women at a lower price than they charged men. These ?bake sales? were a popular form of protest against racial preferences on college campuses across the country, and they were often effective enough to elicit outrage and even outright repression.

The effect at Grand Valley State, however, was unusual, and a bit more extreme, since the protesters and their faculty advisor were complicit in the suppression of their rights. The Club?s leaders resigned. As I wrote at the time, quoting an article that no longer seems to be available:

Paul Leidig, the club?s faculty adviser, said ?the club supported the idea of the bake sale as a satirical form of expression against affirmative action.?

But Leidig, who also is chairman of the Ottawa County Republican Party, said he did not know the students planned to use a racially biased price scale when he approved the event.

?Had I known that, I would have not approved it,? he said.
As a result of the controversy, Leidig said he advised the students to consider a leadership change to acknowledge they respect the fact people were offended by the bake sale.

With faculty advisors as clueless as Paul Leidig, who needs clueless administrators? But GVSU had the latter in droves, who proceeded to bring charges against the students for violating the school?s anti-discrimination policy. The Republican Club, acting like many leaders of the state?s Republican Party, apologized, groveled, and ultimately disbanded.

As the Grand Rapids Press reminds us in an article today,

Valley State University clamped down three years ago when a student group attempted to apply affirmative action principles to cupcake pricing.

White men were charged $2; blacks and white women were charged 75 cents; Asians and Latinos were charged 50 cents and American Indians were charged a nickel.

Many potential customers complained the bake sale was just plain tasteless, and university officials put the College Republicans on probation for violating a policy requiring financial transactions be nondiscriminatory.

You might think that a state civil rights commission would have been on the case from the beginning, stepping in to protect the First Amendment rights of students to parody university behavior they find objectionable. If you did, you would have course been wrong. Well, half-wrong; the Michigan Civil Rights Commission remains alert and on the case, but on the wrong side.

The Michigan Civil Rights Commission will meet Monday at GVSU?s Allendale campus to take testimony about what can be done to create a learning environment that?s amenable to all.

?Free speech and hate speech can be difficult to balance,? said Harold Core, the commission?s spokesman.

I have only two problems with this observation: 1) A ?bake sale? parody (actually, it?s more a direct reflection than a parody) is not ?hate speech?; 2) GVSU didn?t ?balance? anything; it put students on probation for exercising their First Amendment rights, thus destroying their organization.

And who is watching these watchers, holding them up to the ridicule they deserve? Not the Grand Rapids Press, whose reporter writes with a pseudo-profundity that echoes the emptiness at the core of the Civil Rights Commission:

The bottom line: One student?s right to free speech often straddles another?s right to live and learn on a hate-free campus. Sometimes it is not easy to separate what?s acceptable and what?s not.

Perhaps eventually some fearless GVSU students will put on a parody of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, portraying it as actually supporting rather than opposing discrimination based on race.

Oh wait. That wouldn?t be a parody....

ADDENDUM

As F.I.R.E. pointed out in its letter at the time to the president of GVSU,

at least one GVSU administrator is on record suggesting that the real reason that the university is trying the students for their political expression is that some people found it ?offensive.? GVSU Director of Student Life Bob Stoll was quoted in a March 25, 2005, article in The Grand Rapids Press as saying, ?To do something this offensive is not appropriate.?

Since I find support for ?balancing? First Amendment rights against speech that is not hate speech to be deeply ?offensive? and ?not appropriate,? do you think I can call on the Governor to put both the Civil Rights Commission and the Grand Rapids Press on probation, or perhaps to disband them?

Full post as published by Discriminations on March 30, 2008 (boomark / email).