Closer to home than Tulsa, Pat Robertson's Regent University's administration is having hissy fits and threatening a law student with expulsion because he dared post an unflattering photo of Robertson on a Face Book page. No doubt, Robertson thinks God has appointed him censor of the world. I, like a number of people in this area, find Pat Robertson to be a regional embarrassment and a deterrent to progressive business moving into the area. Thus, I am dumbfounded, for example, as to why Norfolk International Airport has allowed Pat/Regent to buy a huge advertising space on one of the main concourses. How many people has Pat's face scared away from deciding to relocate their business to the area? But, like Richard Roberts, Pat throws his money around and often gets what he wants while people look the other way.
In any event, I digress. Here are some highlights from the Virginian Pilot's story (http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=134434&ran=10232&lpos=spot3&lid=homePO) on Regent's war against a single student. I am sure Regent is not happy about the coverage:
Regent University officials have threatened to discipline a law student for posting on his Facebook page an unflattering photo of Regent President Pat Robertson. The student, Adam M. Key, defended his action as constitutionally protected free speech in a 14-page legal brief he presented to the dean of the law school. Regent officials gave Key two choices: publicly apologize for posting the picture and refrain from commenting about the matter in a “public medium,” or write a brief defending the posting. He faces punishment that could include expulsion.
Key, a second-year law student, said he refused to apologize and “be muzzled” by the university, so he composed the document, which includes citations from noted First Amendment cases. The picture, posted on Key’s Facebook social-networking Web page, shows Robertson making what appears to be an obscene hand gesture.
Key said that Jeffrey Brauch, dean of the law school, rejected his brief and that he now awaits disciplinary action under the university’s Standard of Personal Conduct. At one point during the controversy, Key said, he was escorted by three armed security guards from the university’s public relations office.
Unlike public institutions, private universities do not have to adhere to First Amendment guarantees in enacting codes of student conduct, said Howard Wasserman, visiting associate professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law. “But in my view, any university, in its role as a place for robust and uninhibited debate, should commit itself to the principles of the First Amendment, even if it offends the president,” said Wasserman, who has written about free-speech issues. He noted that Regent, as a Christian school, “may have a different view of how the speech issue fits into its mission.”
Wasserman said Harvard University, like Regent a private institution, probably wouldn’t take such an action against a student “because they know faculty members would be outraged and there would be public ridicule.” He characterized a university punishing a student for posting satire on his personal Web page as “a dangerous action.” “The more the power structure starts to get at private expression, the more it looks like they’re engaging in thought control,” he said.
Thought control? Do you really think so? That's the Christianists' main agenda - thought control and the elimination of knowledge, reason and logic. P.S. as with the Roberts family in Tulsa, Pat Robertson lives most lavishly over at Regent University. Having a "ministry" is very lucrative.
Other publications carrying stories include the International Herald Tribune (http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/11/america/NA-GEN-US-Christian-Critic.php),
1 comment:
As Adam Keys former roommate, I would like to make sure you are clear that this story is not the whole story and this is not Adam Keys only incident here at Regent, if he is disciplined it is simply the straw that broke the camels back, and Pat has already come out and said that he does not condone punishing people for making fun of him but what Adam has done here at Regent goes far and beyond one picture. Just so the truth is clear, as a student of Regent I have never once been censored in any way shape or form and we have serious academic dialogue and debate here.
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