Letters

Thursday, April 9, 1998

Letters

Campus code stifles speech

The Daily Bruin is right to criticize UCLA’s hate speech code
("Campus policy violates students’ rights," April 8). This is
especially troubling at public universities which, according to
Supreme Court decisions, do not have the leeway to regulate student
behavior that private universities have.

Indeed, the most insidious part of a speech code is the
"chilling" effect it has on campus speech. While it is admittedly
unlikely that the university will discipline a student solely for
an incident of hate speech, the vagueness and broadness of campus
speech codes inevitably leave students unwilling to express
controversial views, for fear of punishment. This was the basis for
the California Superior Court’s overturning of Stanford
University’s speech code.

The Coalition to Reform Speech Codes at Brown University was
formed to help ensure all college students in America the right to
express any political belief. What better antidote for "student
apathy" than a university community in which no political opinions
are left unexpressed? We invite interested UCLA students to contact
us at [email protected].

Luc Morris

Kevin Blake

John Snyder

Brown University

Coalition to Reform Speech Codes

Lauding leadership

This letter is in response to Wednesday’s column ("Utah’s
Majerus should replace Lavin as leader of UCLA hoops,"April 8) by
Vytas Mazeika on Steve Lavin. As a die-hard Bruin working at Duke,
I can understand Mazeika’s frustration about the latest hoop
season. However, I disagree strongly with him on a need to replace
Coach Lavin. I believe that he is doing an excellent job and has
shown great leadership during the season.

"I was there" when UCLA basketball underwent multiple coaching
changes and suffered because of them. Furthermore, "I was here"
when Duke’s hoop program suffered through a few lean years (e.g.,
last in the ACC), and "I was here" when Coach K got hired as a
little known coach out of I-do-not-remember-where. Everybody also
needs to remember that it took him a few years before he made it to
the Final Four, and another few before his first championship.
Through the years, there has been one thing that I have always
envied about Duke basketball – "rabid" support from the students
and other fans regardless of its performance. To sit in the Cameron
Indoor Stadium during a basketball game is an experience worth
having (although it still does not come close to seeing all those
banners in we-all-know-where).

To conclude, I believe Coach Lavin is doing a great job as the
head coach of UCLA basketball team. I look forward to his first
(and UCLA’s 12th) national championship.

Dr. Tong H. Lee

Bruin Class of 1980

Duke University Medical Center

Club clarification

I commend reporter Mason Stockstill for a generally accurate
account in Tuesday’s Daily Bruin of the Sierra Club debate on U.S.
population stabilization ("Protest targets professor," April 7).
Indeed, his presentation was more professional than recent articles
that have appeared on the front page of the L.A. Times, and as
major stories in "New Times" and the L.A. Weekly.

Still there was one important error in The Bruin story which I
would like to correct. The Sierra Club initiative most certainly
does not call for the Club to "condemn immigration." What the
initiative calls for is "…reduction in net immigration
(immigration minus emigration)."

Suppose that immigration levels were reduced by, say, a factor
of two, consistent with the intent of the initiative. Then, the
United States would still admit more immigrants by far than any
other country in the world.

Ben Zuckerman

Physics and Astronomy Department