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Nuria Gallego Murcia

Professor Scaife
RHET 1312
October 20, 2016
Hate speech against free speech
Can colleges protect free speech while also curbing voices of hate? As the washington
post says, that is the question every single victim of hate speech has in his mind. Nowadays
college presidents are doing everything they can to avoid hate speech but sometimes they cannot
fix everyones problems so their only solution is to make all of the students comfortable
respecting each other's opinions and thoughts. So the question that came out to my head about all
these innocent people having a hard time during college is how do universities and students
balance free speech and hate speech on campus that is in the best interests of all students? It is
hard to balance both at the same time but using speech codes can make everybody to work
together and not denying other people because of their culture or skin color.
I met a guy two weeks ago that was telling about how his freshman year went. While I
was listening to him my mind was was blowing up because I could not believe how people can
treat others in such a disrespectful way. He told me that he had a roommate who called him with
a despective nickname every single day. My friend accept it like a joke the first two days but the
third day he was tired already so he asked him to stop nicely but he thought it was funny so he
just kept calling him with the nickname. Although my friend knew he was not doing it with bad
intention, he did not like it so he asked him again to stop but he refused to stop. Instead of getting
in a fight with him my friend went to get help and things changed after this and he apologized.
But that was not enough for my friend because it had been a hard semester so he asked him to

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move out because he was not comfortable with him in the same room so the director of the
building made him to move out because the behavior he had with my friend. That is an example
of hate speech on campus. Based on the story I realized about all the cases of hate speech around
the world and how is it changing some people. But the purpose of college presidents, as
Kingkade said, was that no matter what culture you have you have to feel comfortable in your
environment because we are all different and we do not have the right to judge others based on
their appearance or beliefs.
Hate speech cannot be under control all the time. It can be supervised in indoor places but
when people are outdoor nobody can control what they are doing or saying so it is right there
when hate speech occurs. Sometimes people can get hurt badly even though it can affect their
health and that is what every university want to fix. They are trying to inculcate all students how
important is to respect each student on campus as we want to be treat. However they are not
banning free speech they are just teaching them how to use free speech without hurting anybody.
Hate speech has been a big issue over the years and we can see now how it is starting to
get better usually between students on campus. As we saw in the article about college presidents,
Kingkade said they are trying to get everyone comfortable on campus even though they cannot
change people's thoughts. Being engaged in the issues of the day is what we want our students
to be doing and I want to be a model in that. They cannot solve all their problems but they can
make racist people treat others in a proper way. Everyone does not have to like each other but at
least they need to respect them. All the students want to go to college and feel free and
comfortable as home because that is why they pay for so college presidents are making this
easiest for them to do not have to worry about people hurting their feelings or commonly known
as hate speech. Every single person in the world has different thoughts and cultures but that does

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not mean some of them are better than others. Free speech means they can express their feeling
and thoughts without the fear of being judged by others. That is what college are working on
nowadays, trying to get everyone together sharing their feelings and accepting all of them no
whether you like it or not.
According to the article from Santa Clara University, there are different perspectives
about speech codes. It refers to a rule or regulation that limits, restricts, or bans speech beyond
the strict legal limitations upon freedom of speech or press. Some people see hate speech codes
as a good thing because it helps the victims to feel safe when others are attacking them. Hate
speech can cost serious damage in the person, it is not just hurting his feelings, it can cost
psychological problems and depression. When someone is suffering hate speech they feel bad
and unsafe thinking that they are not going to be able to live their lives because some individuals
are provocating them a hard time. It can end up even with violence so that is why some people
agree it should be hate speech codes in every single college to protect them. With this agreement
they also agree to not have free speech because sometimes the free speech cause all these
problems because people express what they think about politics, race, different opinions about
life In the other side there are some people against hate speech codes because they think
everyone deserve to have free speech and these codes restrict the opportunity to express
themselves as they want. They think if people do not feel free to express whatever they want
there is not point to free speech. But they also agree that free speech include respect and not
violence. Approximately there were 75 hate speech codes in the US in 1990 but in 1991 it grew
over 300. According to a recent study, reports of campus harassment increased 400 percent
between 1985 and 1990. Moreover, 80 percent of campus harassment incidents go unreported.

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That is a statistic Santa Clara university provided about how hate speech is growing faster every
year (Uelmen).
Over the years, the term of hate speech has been changing and generations see it from a
differently perspective. In the past, as Stanley indicated in his article, people thought about free
speech in a completely different way. They were more aggressive and not that sensitive,
everyone had their own thoughts and they did not really care about people feeling uncomfortable
in certain situations as politics or racist topics. Nowadays the appropriate boundaries of campus
free speech are regulated with speech codes that remained skeptical of the value of defending
hateful or discriminatory speech that was not clearly tied to deeply held beliefs about religion or
politics as Stanley said. Many people get really hurt after being victims of hate speech so they
really trust the government or associations like college campus to do something to prevent all of
these things. But sometimes the only thing they can do is teach them how to coexist with
different people, different cultures and differents thoughts.
Another of my question about this topic is what happen after all with the responsible of
someone have to drop college or feel unsafe and uncomfortable in campus, what happen to those
people. Do they go to jail; do they receive a punishment? In some of the researches that I have
done universities think that need to be punish because if they do not see consequences on their
acts now they are not going to know how to react in the future and probably they are going to fail
every job or situation they will have in the future. So they think is better to fix that problem now
instead of waiting until it would be too late. If they learn how to respect people now they should
be able to do it the the future because they will learn the lesson.
Speech codes are sometimes the resolution of the conflict between civil rights and civil
liberties. For some students hate speech is more than just hurt feelings, it is a verbal attack as

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oppressive discrimination, subjugation, and hind the ability to compete fairly in the academic
area, according to Santa Clara University.
Every college around the US want to have a free ideas environment in his area where
every student can express his beliefs without any complex. They want all the students to work
together to create better vibes and prevent bad choices. They are trying to avoid the behavior of
student where they judge others because of their skin color or their sexuality. In some of the
campus the goal is to ban free speech but it can end up taking away the right of the students to
feel free and comfortable with their personality. It is a right, so everybody express opinions and
thoughts. A different point they are working on is to work the problems they have instead of
being afraid what other people think about you. They are afraid to be humiliated in front of
others, but hate speech codes show them there is no need to fight and no need to treat others in a
bad way if you do not want to be treating like that.
Hate speech is increasing more and more every year but also more universities are
working on fixing the issue teaching them how to interact with people in a proper way. Hate
speech taught me that everyone is different and that is a reason why we cannot treat people in
different way, we are all human and we have the right to live our life respecting each others too.
As the Washington Post said, people are afraid of everything now even though to make some
mistakes when they are talking in front of a group of people. Nobody said what a good speech or
a bad speech is, every student has the right to make mistakes and learn from them. Shibley said.
Its not the governments job to pick what speech is good and what speech is bad. We have
always said the remedy for bad speech is more speech.
One example that Shibley gives in his article is about a fraternity party. They specify they
only wanted white girls in the party and that is a result of hate speech based on racism. The

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whole school revealed and they protested about the equality of every student at campus.
Remember that Yale belongs to all of you, and you all deserve the right to enjoy the good of this
place, without worry, without threats, and without intimidation. Shibley said.
To sum up, I want to say this essay made me go deeper into this topic and helped me find
some interesting and sad things about hate speech on campus. Some people do not understand
how hard is for some of the students to find themselves comfortable with a group of people.
They try to fit in some of the groups but they feel like crap when others start making fun of
them or discriminating them because of their skin color, culture or even their sexuality. At that
point some of them get really hurt, not just emotionally but they can even fall into depression and
in an extreme case we can talk about suicide. When people hear about hate speech they think it is
a joke and it is nothing serious but it really is. Some of the victims have to put in the hands of
professional psychologists to get through this situation. I found out through this paper that hate
speech has increased over the years and more and more people are trying to be against it and fix
this situation. Almost everybody thinks that free speech is a right so everybody has the right of
express their thoughts and beliefs but there is a point where they cannot cross the line of free
speech, they need to know when to stop in order to not hurt anybody. That is the problem of
some of them that they think free speech can include hurting people's feeling and that is when
hate speech comes out. But college campus has found a point where free speech and hate speech
are balance and cover the best interests for all the students in campus.

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Works Cited
Kingkade, Tyler. What Three College Presidents learned from Campus Racism Protest
The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post, 1 April 2016.

Hate speech on campus American Civil Liberties Union. American Civil Liberties Union, 2016
ACL. <https://www.aclu.org/other/hate-speech-campus?redirect=hate-speech-campus>

Uelmen, Gerald F. Campus Hate Speech Codes Santa Clara University. Santa Clara
University, November 1990.

Anderson, Nick and Svrluga, Susan. Can colleges protect free speech while also curbing voices
of hate? The Washington Post. The Washington Post, November 10, 2015

Stanley, Jason. "The Free-Speech Fallacy." Chronicle of Higher Education 62.27 (2016): B4-b5.
MLA International Bibliography. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

Chemerinsky, Edward, and Howard Gillman. "What Students Think About Free Speech."
Chronicle Of Higher Education 62.30 (2016): B4-b6. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 27
Oct. 2016.

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