{"id":12049,"date":"2011-11-14T09:10:04","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T13:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=12049"},"modified":"2014-07-13T10:20:03","modified_gmt":"2014-07-13T15:20:03","slug":"bullying-is-bad-banning-bullying-would-be-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/11\/14\/bullying-is-bad-banning-bullying-would-be-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullying is bad: banning bullying would be worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wendy Kaminer<\/a> on the District of Columbia (DC) City Council’s proposed anti-bullying rules:<\/p>\n

\n

It started on college and university campuses, where repressive speech codes have been teaching generations of students that they have no right to offend someone, anyone, who can claim membership in a growing list of presumptively disadvantaged groups.<\/p>\n

Now, this mindlessly censorious movement to force us to be nice to each other is encroaching on public life, off-campus: The District of Columbia (DC) City Council is considering banning the \u2018harassment, intimidation, or bullying\u2019 of students in public libraries and parks, as well as schools (including the District\u2019s public university). Bureaucrats in charge of all relevant supervisory agencies are required to promulgate detailed policies that define bullying and harassment \u2018no less inclusively\u2019 than the City Council.<\/p>\n

It would be difficult to define bullying more inclusively: according to the council bill, \u2018harassment, intimidation or bullying\u2019 is \u2018any gesture or written, verbal or physical act, including electronic communication, that is reasonably perceived as being motivated either by any actual or perceived characteristic, such as race, colour, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, or a mental, physical or sensory handicap, or by any other distinguishing characteristic\u2019, which a \u2018reasonable person\u2019 would foresee as effectively intimidating or harmful to students or their property, or as effectively \u2018insulting or demeaning\u2019 to any student or group of students so as to disrupt \u2018the orderly operation of a school, university, recreational facility, or library\u2019.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t bother trying to figure out what this vague and verbose definition of bullying includes. Focus instead what it might exclude — not much. Virtually no speech or behaviour that a student self-conscious about any \u2018distinguishing characteristic\u2019 might consider hurtful or that a petty bureaucrat might find offensive is beyond the reach of this ban. Its scope is simply breathtaking; although, sad to say, the \u2018inclusiveness\u2019 of this bill doesn\u2019t distinguish it from other state and local bullying laws or campus speech codes. It is, however, shamefully distinguished by its application outside of schools to public libraries and parks. Imposing a subjective sensitivity code on the general public, it displays an astonishing contempt for the most obvious and fundamental freedoms of speech and belief, as well as astonishing ignorance of constitutional rights.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wendy Kaminer on the District of Columbia (DC) City Council’s proposed anti-bullying rules: It started on college and university campuses, where repressive speech codes have been teaching generations of students that they have no right to offend someone, anyone, who can claim membership in a growing list of presumptively disadvantaged groups. Now, this mindlessly censorious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,13],"tags":[828,459,374,186,661,504,985],"class_list":["post-12049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-liberty","category-usa","tag-bullying","tag-censorship","tag-children","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-regulation","tag-teenagers","tag-washingtondc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-38l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12049"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15701,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12049\/revisions\/15701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}