Out of Juice?

Now that three weeks have gone by since Student Council passed their resolution regarding the gossip site juicycampus.com, I thought I'd try to see if anything came of it.

Unsurprisingly, Juicy Campus and Facebook have yet to modify their behavior in response to Council's requests. In an email, College Rep. Sam Davies, who sponsored the bill, said:

We sent letters to Juicy Campus and Facebook respectively, including our formal resolution and voicing our opinions on what should be done. Juicy Campus had no interest in speaking with us, but Facebook did reply and let us know that they will be meeting to discuss advertising for Juicy Campus, but are not at liberty to give us any specifics.

Facebook did not respond to my inquiry on Council's request. For the moment, they are still running Juicy Campus's ads, such as those pictured below, and they seem to come up quite frequently.

The actual impact on students is harder to measure. Asked about the resolution's success in this regard, Davies said it was "hard to say" but still thought the bill generated "positive effects." In an interview, Council President Matt Schrimper was also upbeat. Schrimper told me that since the resolution's passage many student organizations, prominently including the IFC and ISC, had made appeals to their members to stop using the site. Rather than directing the effort, he said, Council had acted as an "umbrella overseeing the different responses" and helping groups to "frame the debate in terms of our larger community of honor and trust." While he too conceded he had little idea exactly what kind of effect the actions had produced on student behavior, he said he was all in all "quite pleased with Council's response."

Curious, I decided to produce a snapshot of Juicy Campus usage between now and when Council passed their resolution. On Tuesday, March 25, the day they passed the bill, the UVa portion of juicycampus.com had 24 posts with a combined 8,386 views (that's views of individual posts, not of the whole site itself). Yesterday, Wednesday, April 16, there were 21 posts with a combined 14, 612 views.

It should be noted that this analysis is completely unscientific, as one or either of these days could be outliers. But for what it's worth, the snapshot gives little indication Juicy Campus usage is falling away.

Shameless Plug: VT Memorial Vigil

5:30 PM today in the Amphitheater, to remember the first aniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings. Candles and ribbons will be provided, and two a capella groups will perform.

It ain't safe if it ain't there

After calling Safe Ride five times between 1:50 and 2:00 this morning and getting only the answering machine, I decided to say screw it and trudged home through the dark. As evidenced by this post, I was neither mugged nor abducted. Still, the experience left me a tad miffed.

I know I've heard other people tell stories of similar experiences. If you have one, leave a comment below.

Exactly what I'm talking about

Earlier, I argued that the state's public proclamation that public universities must notify the parents of mentally ill students believed to pose a danger to themselves or others could have a chilling effect on students' willingness to seek treatment at student health facilities. While the new law sets the bar for contacting parents fairly high (there must be a "substantial likelihood" of harm in the near future), that latter part of the message won't always get through, and here are some examples why.

A prominent article on the Charlottesville Newsplex web site bears the headline "UVa To Notify Parents of Mentally Ill Students." A headline from The Daily Progress reads, "UVa to warn of mental illness signs," while another from the web site of WHSV 3 (Harrisonburg) says, "UVA Policy to Tell Parents." Statements qualifying these blunt headlines come only later in the article, and they're probably too vague to put concerned students at ease.

The problem with parents

As part of the response to last year's tragic shootings at Virginia Tech, the Virginia General Assembly recently passed a number of bills dealing with how Virginia's public universities handle students with mental health problems. But in attempting to solve one obvious problem, they may have created another more subtle one.

Among the bills was HB 1005, sponsored by Charlottesville's own Delegate Rob Bell (R). In essence, the bill requires that universities establish policies ensuring that if a student receives treatment at the school's student health facilities and is determined to pose a serious threat to him/herself or others, then the school must notify the student's parents. (If you're interested, you can read the whole text of the bill here.) The bill passed unanimously at every stage of the legislative process.

The parents of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, didn't know that Cho had undergone treatment and been given such a designation. Some believe that knowledge could have somehow prevented the tragedy.

While parental notification probably isn't a bad idea in cases this severe, the presence of the policy could deter some students from seeking the help they need. For many students, the chief advantage of going to Student Health is that they can receive treatment and guidance without their parents knowing about it. For some, it allows them to avoid embarrassment, not an insignificant consideration when deciding to seek help. For others, whose parents strongly disapprove of therapy or any other psychiatric help, Student Health's anonymity makes it the only option they have unless they pay for their own health insurance.

In either case, students are much less likely to come forward if they think there's a possibility Student Health will dial up mom & dad. In reality, such notification will occur only rarely, as the bill sets the bar for parental notification fairly high. But a perception problem remains, since students will more likely catch the words "parental notification" than the details that go with them. Student Health centers here and around the state should do all they can to let students know they will respect their privacy so they can prevent students from avoiding the help they need.

Much ado about muzzles

The Cavalier Daily this week received a dubious honor: a 2008 Jefferson Muzzle from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, based here in Charlottesville. The Center gives these "awards" to those they deem to have committed "especially egregious or ridiculous" censoring of free speech, which this year includes 14 "winners" ranging from a principal and superintendent in Connecticut to the Federal Communications Commission.

The Cav Daily (more specifically, the paper's 118th Managing Board, which ran it from Jan. 2007 - Jan. 2008) received its muzzle for "firing a cartoonist because of public criticism the paper received for publishing one of his cartoons despite the fact that the editorial staff signed off on the cartoon before its publication," according to the Center's web site.

The cartoonist in question was Grant Woolard, who at the time also served as one of the paper's Graphics editors. His "Ethiopian Food Fight" cartoon (pictured below) drew vocal protests from the University's black community, a sit-in right outside the office, anonymous threats of violence directed towards the staff and, I later learned, thinly-veiled threats from the UVa administration concerning the status of the paper's lease. I was then still serving as one of the paper's Opinion editors. I actually saw the cartoon before it was printed (Grant wanted to know if I thought the MB would print it), but I had no role in approving it.

While I believe the MB serving at the time erred in forcing Woolard to resign, I have a much harder time considering the act a serious violation of "free speech" in any meaningful sense. As I've argued here before, there's a difference between censorship and simply maintaining a paper's standards of taste, especially with regards to cartoons. Woolard wasn't trying to make any sort of editorial point with his cartoon; he was trying to be funny (you can read his explanation to the contrary, but I find it rather contrived and unconvincing).

Newspaper's have a responsibility to their readers to ensure they don't print material that has no other purpose except to shock or offend. When they fail to do that, it hurts both their bottom line and, more importantly, their reputation for journalistic integrity. Scott Adams, creator of the popular comic strip Dilbert, made a similar point in a recent interview: "It’s not censorship when a public company makes a business decision about what product to provide to its customers. I respect that."

The Center's web site states,

A central value of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press is to insure that the press need not fear reporting or commenting on the controversial issues of the day. ... When adverse public reaction is the primary factor in determining press content, one must question how “free” the press truly is.

And in an interview, the Center's director, Robert O'Neil, intimated the paper might win another muzzle next year due to its handling of last month's cartoon controversy.

Were the Cav Daily's comics page an integral part of the paper's "reporting or commenting," I think the Center might have a valid argument. But the vast majority of their comics, like Woolard's and those at issue last month, make no editorial point. Regulating that content to match readers' tastes doesn't constitute any meaningful form of censorship.

In short, one can safely say the events leading up to Woolard's resignation included an awful lot of mistakes. But an egregious violation of free speech? I don't buy it.

That'll teach him...or not

There's a lot you can say about first year Alex Cortes, but you certainly can't charge he lacks tenacity. According to friends of mine at the Cav Daily Opinion section, Cortes had submitted a piece several times arguing Hillary Clinton couldn't constitutionally run for president because the U.S. Constitution describes the president's powers using the pronoun "he" (you can read a version of it on his blog). The paper rarely prints letters unrelated to the University community and felt no particular compunction to make an exception in this case. He was so insistent that it became something of a running joke at the paper, and a heavily modified version of it wound up in their April Fools' issue.

Undeterred, Cortes decided to broach the issue in another forum: a lecture given at the Law School today by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In the Q & A afterwards, Cortes asked Scalia what he thought of the idea. Scalia responded, "Give me a break." He then took a few minutes to explain why the idea held no water whatsoever.

Considering that Scalia's the strictest constructionist of the bunch and even he gave the idea the Supreme Court version of an eye roll, perhaps Cortes will finally lay it to rest. Then again, knowing him, probably not.