Take Back the Night (TBTN) is an event that stands in stark contrast to the dubious political rhetoric that has been saturating the airwaves. The event has been happening on Ohio State’s campus since 1978, however, it’s been an annual event since 1996. Women and Allies Rising in Resistance (WARR), a female empowerment group on campus, organize TBTN each year.

Take Back the Night is organized each year for a myriad of important reasons, each layered with issues of women’s rights, student safety, female empowerment and institutional inefficiencies that do little to assist victims of sexual assault. The initial event in 1978 was put together as a response to a rise in violent attacks against women going out at night. As is made clear by the event’s title, it should be safe for any citizen, regardless of gender identification, to walk, socialize and live their lives without a persistent fear of violence.

The event’s message since then has remained largely the same. However it now serves as not only an atmosphere of support and empowerment for survivors of sexual violence but also a place for educational discourse for those not directly affected by this violence. It is a chance for the greater community to gain an education on the role of a bystander in many of these situations and perhaps more importantly the responsibilities of a bystander and the importance of intervention when a situation has escalated into dangerous territories.

Tess Sabo, a 5th year student studying Environmental Policy and Management who has taken an active role in organizing the event, spoke to the diversity of the crowd, saying, “many young women come out and show their support, survivors and co-survivors also attend in order to share their experiences and listen to others. Men also attend, generally it’s a diverse mix of individuals who are all upset at the concept of rape culture and how it effects our community everyday”

This idea of “rape culture” isn’t a new one, however, its persistent permeation in society is alarming. Rape culture, although prevalent in our communities, is oft difficult to articulate.

Sabo defines it as “a culture that encourages and perpetuates victim blaming through images, language or personal attitudes. This creates an environment where rape is more or less okay and people stop trying to prevent it. In this culture it becomes okay to be a rapist because people see the rapist as a person deserving of respect in many others aspects and someone probably deserved it anyhow, or the perpetrator didn’t mean it…”

Although the idea that the victim of sexual assault can be made to look like an instigator or somehow deserving of such treatment may seem outrageous, but it is prevalent, it is common and to those that work with sexual assault victims it is far from shocking. Unfortunately, for most college students, seeing the victim of sexual assault receive blame for the assailant’s crime isn’t a particularly foreign concept.

It is because of this unspoken acceptance of this victim-blaming or victim-shaming ideology that rape culture has had room to grow and flourish in the minds and institutions of our community. “Sexual violence and rape culture is something everyone must deal with on a daily basis. We need to know how to respond to it, how to deal with and garner an understanding amongst ourselves that this culture will not go away anytime soon without our active involvement,” Sabo said.

Take Back the Night is doing much to combat this atmosphere of hostility, violence and inaction. This year’s event will take place on Thursday May 17th in the Browning Amphitheatre. From 4-5 pm, participants will be given the opportunity to “table,” where several community groups involved in women’s rights and anti-violence initiatives will engage the community in dialogue and promote their organizations. The program starts officially at 5:30 and will include survivors speaking about their experiences as well as others who will speak about the war on women in general.

Participants will begin forming up for the march at 7:30 at the Browning Amphitheater. In the past, the march has been for female identified and female-bodied people only. This year it is open to all people. Men who want to support survivors in general or ones they know angered by the existence of race culture have wanted to be included and now are.

The focus of the event has shifted from solely empowering women to empowering survivors. Since only women aren’t victimized they wanted to create an environment in which survivors of all identities could receive the same empowerment from the event that female identified and female bodies people have received from the event in the past.

The “Survivor Speak-Out” after the march will be exclusively for female-identified persons, however, there will be separate programming for the men.

When asked of the importance or relevance of the event, Sabo said, “looking around at the world and the many inequities and harsh realities that face women, it becomes abundantly clear that we must do something about it, something unifying and empowering that brings these issues to the forefront and brings people together in active opposition to these injustices.”

According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, better known as RAINN the current statistics of sexual abuse in the United States are alarming. With 80% of victims being under the age of 30 and someone being sexually assaulted in the U.S every 2 minutes these issues are also extremely relevant to our campus. 54% of sexual assaults are not reported to the proper authorities and 97% of all rapists never spend a day in jail.

With statistics like these threatening to solidify themselves are “normal” levels of sexual violence it is no wonder people are angry. Beyond this anger, however, sits a catalytic inspiration. Beyond this anger is an urgent call to action that will shake the very foundations of rape culture, a call to action so loud and so resolute and that those very foundations will fall in on themselves to leave only space for substantive change. Take Back the Night responds to this inspiration with action, marching for a community and society that does not tolerate sexual assault.

Attend the Community Congress this Wednesday May 16th at 9pm to stand up for student suffrage. Join us at the South Oval to re-imagine OSU as an educational institution where the students, faculty, and staff come first.

Invite all of your friends to the Facebook event so we can get a turnout that’s sure to turn more than a few heads.

Want more info? Visit ReimagineOSU.org.

It’s two forty-five in my English class. And I am mad as hell. I leave and I am weary. I get home and I am furious. Okay, great, so now what?

Now, I have decided that writing an essay, article, or academic timewaster on this sentiment is exactly what our generation doesn’t need. It is not what happens next.

What do I do? Take to Facebook: the place where I can be myself and react like a human being, not a grade conscious or prestige seeking robot and post this as my status:

Getting ridiculous:  Essentially, year after year I sit in class and hear that black people are treated as less than as second-class citizens, unjustly demeaned and pushed down, historically and in the present day, that not much has really changed, but isn’t that a great topic for an essay?why don’t we do a project exploring that more? how about a round of conversation? a moment of silence? But, nothing changes!! The same for other minorities as well. Will our children sit in the same seats and write the same essays year after year? And feel awkward for getting angry and impatient – emotions not acceptable in the classroom – some days…and wondering if this is just an education of tolerance for racism in the past and present instead of the elimination of it. Isn’t that silence really a moment of silence for racism? Can’t we all just cluck our tongues and laugh at the minority comedian’s point about how f*d everything is – and just keep swimming? More and more college feels like an education in the acceptance of my own oppression and the oppression of mass amounts of people for the gain of a select core of mostly white people, unjustly gained. I want people to start getting pissed OFF in the classroom!! I want my peers to get just as fired up as me!!! Why not? It’s time to end the timeline. Sure, college is all about education, learning things, not necessarily doing things. But, what we need, now more than ever, is a change of attitude in the classroom, from a moment of silence to a moment of uproar.

I suggest, instead of sharing this article…especially if you are a young person…copying and pasting the excerpt above as your status or making one of your own. Because, what we need is a mainstream attitude changer and  our social media posts -  embellished with emoticons, exclamation marks, and misspellings – are the first places to start turning feelings into words into action.

The sentiment of “Enough is Enough” and “Cut it out!!” is not found in your textbook. There is the silence of acceptance between each period and capital letter. Acceptance that history can be made out of anything. Acceptance that injustice is merely another thing to research.

The sentiments of “Stand up!” and “Speak out!” blaring from activists’ megaphones don’t mean anything without the educated masses getting pissed off first.

Next week, maybe I will raise my middle finger for all two hours and eighteen minutes of tolerating, discussing, and writing about hundreds of years of the oppression of most the earth’s inhabitants,

“Excuse me Professor; I’d like to share my outrage with this class.”       

I know I’ve been critical of Planned Parenthood before, boorishly so, but this, is some bullshit, and it does pose an existential threat to Planned Parenthood in the state of Arizona. Jan Brewer knows it’s some bullshit because she signed it Friday night, the time when executives sign all the pieces of legislation of which they’re ashamed. It’s likely to be blocked and ruled unconstitutional, just like all the other laws in all the other states that try to do the same thing. News reports from the Arizona state legislature are practically disaster porn at this point, and I try to stay away from them lest I develop hypertension at age 25, but I never issued an apology of sorts for failing to properly recognize the climate of fear and antagonism that Planned Parenthood has to live in every single day. Blind allegiance to institutions still creeps me out from time to time, but I understand that it’s sometimes necessary when that institution has to constantly fight for its right to exist. Punitive legislation is the pettiest thing, and the class/race implications of defunding affordable access to women’s health care, dearest abstract unknowable metaphysical life force, the class/race implications. Those who still think I’m a sexist, racist giant ball of glib entitlement will probably never read this, but if you could pass it on to them. And if you see the OSU community, can you give it a big hug for me? Love, ultimately, is the only way to heal this toxic climate.

petermgunn@gmail.com for hate mail, screeds, and marriage proposals

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If you are a student who is a victim of or witness to hateful harassment contact  Ohio State’s Bias Assessment and Response Team (BART) or University Police. If you have been a victim of a hateful experience, related to gender, sexuality, race, or another aspect of your identity and would like to share the account of this experience please contact The Pulse via email. 

An Ohio State student* received what she perceived to be a “hate email” on April 28 around 1pm. The email list contained approximately 400 OSU email accounts. The student noticed that almost all of the emails were sent to people with traditionally German last names, she said,

“This combined with the content of the email led me to believe that the email was unsolicited by all the receivers, only sent to students because of their assumed ethnicity.”

The email re-stated appeals to the email recipients on the supposition that minorities are infiltrating Western and white society. An excerpt:

“Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY White country and ONLY into White countries.

Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY White country and ONLY White countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-Whites.

…

But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the White race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-White.”

“I am both shocked and appalled that someone would voice these feelings, let alone to share them with strangers in such a bold, almost proud way,” said the email recipient OSU student.

The student shared the email with a friend from the Ohio State student, faculty, and staff movement called Stand Your Ground, which is currently working with the Ohio State University to develop increased diversity and to institute “inclusion, not just tolerance,” after the University Police reported hate crimes on-campus in April. Several OSU students have reported the incident to  Ohio State’s Bias Assessment and Response Team (BART), which is investigating the incident.

The email linked to a youtube video with racial implications. The title of the email read “hilarious cartoon about how whites took over america”.

*The student chose to stay anonymous due to not wanting attention positive or negative from relaying this information.

If you are a student who is a victim of or witness to hateful harassment contact  Ohio State’s Bias Assessment and Response Team (BART) or University Police. If you have been a victim of a hateful experience, related to gender, sexuality, race, or another aspect of your identity and would like to share the account of this experience please contact The Pulse via email. 

Fifty years plus from creation, this 21^st century production of West Side Story contains themes of love, hate, and the hypocrisy of the American dream we continue to explore. Since the Broadway debut in 1957, revivals of West Side Story are frequent on Broadway, in Off-Broadway tours, and college productions today.

The major conflict between the white Jets and the Puerto-Rican Sharks infiltrates the relationships in the show. The love-struck leads, former Jets gang member, Tony, and Puerto-Rican young woman, Maria, are the catalyst for integration. Yet, throughout the course of the play, their understanding of love and hate become complicated when the two sides clash.

West Side Story is unique because it makes the audience uncomfortable and the finale is exceptionally powerful. It is not the traditional triumphant ending we come to expect from frothy, care-free musicals but  one that opens up discussion and questions society. 

My brother said “I hear there’s supposed to be a general strike” with a fatalist inflection that was two steps away from an exhortation to return to watching reality television. “I haven’t really heard anybody talking about it anymore.” The Chronicle called the movement “mostly moribund” re: the SF Commune. MSNBC.com (who’s just a puppet for the socialist far left, right?) called the Wells Fargo shareholder occupation as “an attempt to revive the Occupy movement.” The narrative has been cast. The movement is dead. Time to move on. Time for MoveOn. You want to fight the 1%? Vote for Obama. Electoral politics, politics as usual, they’ve got this under control. No cause for alarm, for emergency, mayday.

From Thomas Friedman to the Arab Spring™ (now brought to you by the US Military), global movements are the order of the day. From conservation to capitalism to communications, the era of global citizenship has begun, which is great, as long as, you know, America doesn’t have to do anything. Around the world, May Day means one of two things: dancing around the maypole, or a celebration of labor, in that grand Wobbly-esque tradition. Here, Labor Day is a day for shopping. I’m going to repeat that. Labor Day is a day for shopping. If there were a May Day sale, our country would be all over it. Instead, we have a country that doesn’t seem to understand that a general strike means that you don’t go to work/class. I understand that an American talking about a global movement for liberation is like a pubescent 5th grader just released from juvenile hall talking about anti-bullying, but pubescent 5th graders suffer from the cycle of violence too. This year, is different. For the first time since the 19th century, May 1st is a day of significance in the United States of America. Americans are acting in solidarity with workers around the world. It’s not all about us, this May Day.

How many people in the streets does it take before a global movement is legit? That’s not a rhetorical question. For the armchair activist, I have to imagine that there is a number of people in the streets, somewhere around 150,000 I guess, before that person decides to get off his/her (but most likely not per) ass and go join the revolution. I hope that person knows that media estimates of crowds are almost never accurate. The question then follows. If the events of May 1st meets this critical mystical threshold, is the Occupy movement officially back? If only 10,000 people show up, is it still dead? If the prospect of a new episode of The Real Housewives, or the NBA Playoffs, or fear of ostracism from one’s boss/professor is enough to prevent one from taking action, does the number of significant figures attached to a protest really matter?

Oppressive forces always seek to erase their temporal identities. Neoliberal capitalism wasn’t a construction of certain interests, it was just an idea that appeared. Global corporations don’t have histories (though they do have legends) and litanies of failure, they are logos that just one day started existing. In hegemony, narrative turns into stasis. It’s the sense of omnipresence and everpresence that makes people believe that these institutions cannot be combated, that the ideal society that we all intuitively know should exist can never exist, that any attempt at global change must be “realistic,” without understanding that all an idea needs to be realistic is for it to be based in physical reality. The only solutions that aren’t realistic are the ones that call for fantastical measures, such as a resurrected Layne Staley. Indeed, a system of global governance run by consensus-based direct democracy is realistic. The elimination of structural inequality is realistic. Global capitalism’s perpetual dominance has never been ordained. Corporations are people, and hubris is the downfall of every great person. We are never too far from a major historical shift, and a $700 trillion global market in derivatives sounds a lot like hubris to me. All stories have to end.

I do not know how often the two concepts have been conflated before, but upon seeing the posters, the double meaning of May Day becomes obvious. May 1st will be a mayday, to America and to the world. Britain has just entered another recession, thanks to austerity cuts. The Eurozone is not long for this world. Greek fire is not just a Byzantine weapon anymore. Half of this country is defined as poor or low income, with 49 million in hunger. We are a nation that is currently engaged in the mass removal of a people and willing to go to war to defend another one. We are a nation that has a system of incarceration that is of the same scale, and some would argue the same inhumanity, as anything the Soviet Union ever devised. Student debt has hit $1 trillion, and in case you were wondering, that debt has been securitized. And, of course, the environment. The system, all of our systems, are in distress. May Day is a reflection, and broadcast, of that distress. In the same way that I walked 85 miles underneath an upside-down American flag, turned that way to signal that the American system of education is in distress, the demonstrations that occur on May 1, be they sunny and peaceful or find themselves beset by the inclement weather of tear gas clouds, flash-bang thunder, and rubber bullet precipitation, will be a call to those in denial, to those paralyzed by apathy and cynicism, to those who really, truly would rather watch reality television than build a better world, a call that says “The system is precisely this fucked. Mayday.”

May 1st will not just be a mayday though. The day is so much more significant. May Day is Beltane. May Day is the beginning of summer in places that don’t define it as a shopping season. May Day is the day Lysander and Demetrius, Hermia and Helena enter the forest, victims of love tangled up in politics only to find clarity and resolution in the dark chaos of the forest. In the Bay Area at least, it should be sunny. On May Day, there will be jubilation, even liberation. This year, May Day has an eye toward May 2nd. Six months ago, when Occupy folk said that the initial encampments were just the opening movement in the symphony, that there is more to come, May Day is what they were talking about. May it be a day to remember.

In abstract, the question “Would you miss work or class for a day in order to make history?” seems absurd. And yet, MayDay. The level of ambivalence we as a nation have over attending a general strike is the exact reflection of how much the system has strangled us into inaction. We are a complacent-ass nation. Currently hundreds of thousands of Quebecois are engaged in a student strike, and a similar amount of Chileans are protesting as well. Almost every other industrialized nation has a tradition of civil resistance, a recognition that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that that consent can be revoked at any moment. Here, any and all protests must be designed to never inconvenience those who Work For a Living, and must always have a goal of reform. I am always surprised at the level of righteous entitled outrage that comes from those who demand access to their place of work on the day it is supposed to be shut down. Those people use a tone of voice that makes it sound as though shutting down Wells Fargo, or the ports of Oakland, or Bank of America, is a real act of treason. And in those tense moments, when the entitled confront the protesters, I get to wondering. Would they be this angry if a natural disaster or some proclaimed emergency prevented them from going to work for a day, just one day? And then I wonder, is 2 million foreclosures in the state of California, and in the city of San Francisco 84% of which were illegal, not an emergency? Would 3 million be? What is enough for one day in May?

People skip work/class for all sorts of reasons. They are sick, hungover, backed up with work from another class. They want to go to Coachella, or maybe they just don’t feel like getting out of bed that morning. They skip work or class for that day because they know that their workplace will survive without them for one day. But the idea that one should not go to work as an act of civil resistance, to take the day off because you’ve been stricken with a bad case of the capitalism blues, because the people need a day for convalescence, that’s not seen as legitimate. They start to dither, worrying about the inconvenience that their one day absence would cause in their workplace, and then wonder why the system marches on in callous efficiency. I repeat the question then. Would you miss work or class for a day in order to make history? We are the people. The situation is exactly as dire as we deem it to be, and May Day is exactly as historic as we make it. I’m going to be at the Golden Gate Bridge at 7:00 AM. Let it not be said that there is no work to do tomorrow. It’s just not in your office. So take a holiday, a holy day. The will of the people is holy. If not tomorrow, then when? When will it be mayday, if not on May 1st, 2012?

On April 15 at 5pm, Timothy Singratsomboune was walking north on High Street on the west sidewalk with a friend of Chinese descent, the street was heavily populated.  They saw a group of 3 white males screaming something out of a car headed south, on the side close to them.

As the car got closer, Singratsomboune said they were screaming, “Ching chong ching chong” repeatedly.

When the car passed the group, Singratsomboune said the men screamed, “Chinks!

He and his friend ended up crossing the street to walk on the east side of high street after this. However, the car then headed north, on the side closest to them. This time Singratsomboune said they screamed, “Go back to China.”

He said, “And to my friend they yelled, ‘Baby, get with me instead. I can give you white babies.’ Funny, because I have White ancestry.”

The car then slowed down to match the students’ walking pace, yelling things the entire time.

The students said, “Step out of your car if you want to talk to us,” however the men did not address this. Singratsomboune said they just kept yelling “chink” and the like.

If you are a student who is a victim of or witness to hateful harassment contact  Ohio State’s Bias Assessment and Response Team (BART) or University Police. If you have been a victim of a hateful experience, related to gender, sexuality, race, or another aspect of your identity and would like to share the account of this experience please contact The Pulse via email. 

I was a model high school student who consistently helped others with homework and music. Not once did the school have previous issues with me.

School author attended, Monroe High School. Image provided by Rachel Kaczka

What kind of threat was I?

Three months prior, I posted an excerpt from one of my books on a blog that I created with a friend. The excerpt introduced the story’s protagonist as an 18 year-old boy sitting at a lunch table, staring out at every detestable attribute of his peers with the sulky and existential mindset: They don’t matter…They’ll be gone soon…

In no way was the scene advocating violence. However, someone from my school searched for my specific post online, tracked it back to me, and showed it to my principal as a student “worried about her safety.”

“My only ‘offense’ existed in my love to write in realistic terms.”

After a psychological evaluation held the next night, my innocence was proven to be obvious, and I was allowed back into school with the caveat: “Don’t give us another reason.”

Essentially, my only “offense” existed in my love to write in realistic terms, which most readers still consider to be dark due to my coverage of apparently controversial topics like: depression, death, world tragedies, and heartbreak.

A school must protect its students from harm—that is understandable—but at what point does that “protection” go too far?

Court Lineup

My situation wasn’t the first of its kind. Safety in high schools and the provision of free speech have been legal enemies for decades.

“The Supreme Court has defined protected speech in schools as civil and non-disruptive, and unprotected speech as anything that advocates content that is harmful to others or disruptive to the population.”

A multitude of cases have resulted in the struggle for schools to define what should/shouldn’t be censored. Out of these cases we have three legal landmarks, each 20 years apart:

• Tinkerv. DesMoines (1968): A group of high school students in Des Moines, Iowa were suspended for wearing black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. The students’ families sued. The Supreme Court ruled that, because the armbands weren’t disruptive or violent, the students shouldn’t have been suspended and the high school was in the wrong.

• Bethelv. Fraser (1986): A high school student gave a speech in front of his peers in order to win the position to speak at his/her school’s graduation ceremony. Throughout the entire speech, the student referred to another candidate using explicit, sexual innuendo. After the speech, the student was suspended for three days in violation of the school’s disruptive conduct rule. The student’s family sued, and the case later arrived at the Supreme Court. The court’s verdict called the suspension a violation of the First Amendment on the basis of the disruptive conduct rule’s vagueness (essentially not giving enough evidence to suspend his actions).

• Morsev. Frederick (2007): Morse, a high school principal, viewed several of her students waving a banner stating “BONG HITS 4 JESUS” at a school-sanctioned event. Believing that the banner was advocating marijuana, Morse took the students’ banner and suspended the students. The students filed a lawsuit against their principal which ended up going to the Supreme Court. Essentially, the court held that the principal was unable to prove that the banner caused a disruption at the event, therefore making the principal’s censorship a violation of the First Amendment.

What does all of this mean?                                      

For decades, schools have been rebuffed for over-reactive disciplinary measures, but only after students suffered immediate punishments and then had to go through legal processes. From the three cases mentioned, the Supreme Court has defined protected speech in schools as civil and non-disruptive, and unprotected speech as anything that advocates content that is harmful to others or disruptive to the population. These limits seem fair until their application goes awry.

Different as Dangerous

Events like Columbine and VirginiaTech, along with cultural stereotypes and assumptions that spawned from these terrifying crimes, have left schools wondering about possible future acts of violence against students and faculty. Parents join together to ward off future incidents whileschools try to improve their responses to danger.

This perceived “danger” doesn’t always present itself as crazed killer so the spotlight has been turned to students who appear normal, but act or speak differently.

In my experience, students and teachers who are considered “different”, not necessarily dangerous, are considered more threatening than in the past.

“The ignorance in such a stereotype should be obvious”

Basically: I write darkly and am introverted; therefore I must be plotting something devious. The ignorance in such a stereotype should be obvious.

School as Protector

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, between 1995 and 2009, the percentage of students who reported being afraid of attack or harm at school decreased from 12 to 4 percent.

Unfortunately, schools now have no other choice than to take false allegations of students, structures, and teachers into deep consideration due to the weight of the allegations’ content.

According to the report, schools continue to increase security measures, such as security guards, security cameras, and emergency response systems. There was a five percent increase between 2007 and 2010 in the percentage of schools that reported having a structured, anonymous threat reporting system. Some of the reports, however, come up as fake, or “a joke.”

As such, when false allegations meet with sometimes rash, but well-intentioned, actions made by the school, the blame generally falls upon the student(s) who perpetrated false testimonies, the school was just reacting to a student’s overreaction.

Generation Paranoid

Though I feel that I was treated unjustly, I don’t blame the school for what happened.

Rather, the blame lies in the hands of the girl who decided to jump so suddenly, without any investigation beyond her assumptions, to accuse me of being dangerous.

As students, we have a surprising amount of power to reach out and affect how teachers and other students are seen by others. When we misuse this power, innocent people are treated unjustly and branded with a negative status that follows them.

Right now, the accusers are protected while the accused is forced to stand trial for offenses that aren’t justified and/or existent.

To prevent this, we must recognize the power of our words and give fair punishment to those who seek to use such power to harm others.

But first we must recognize and reduce – ideally: abolish – the stereotype that those who are different from us are the most likely to do us harm. By doing so, the likelihood of falsely assessing one’s actions as “dangerous” will diminish, as more objective measures are used to categorize beyond their membership to a stigmatized group (e.g., “loners,” “emo kids”).

In addition, we should chastise those who continue to spew false allegations – even in the form of bullying or malicious gossip – and make our disapproval known, whether through social isolation of the false accuser or seeking to defend our peers whom we know to be undoubtedly innocent…but, different.

Cultural Resolutions, Not Court Solutions

Unfortunately, as individuals continue to harm others with false accusations in schools, “freedom of speech” begins to protect fears and suspicions of the biased. Therefore, this perilous situation can only be remedied if the wrongfully accusative individuals censor themselves or face criminal punishment (e.g., slander). Fears and suspicions should be ironed out in the social and cultural realm, via counseling and education, not in the court-room or through punitive measures.

If speech is to remain free within the United States, those destroying its integrity must be silenced. Otherwise, the freedom that we enjoy will begin to represent the bias of the paranoid.