ACLU decries CU probe of student's 'coarse' newsletter

Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 10, 2006 at midnight

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The American Civil Liberties Union championed a University of Colorado student's right to distribute an offensive newsletter and challenged a top administrator to show why it shouldn't be protected as free speech.

CU sophomore Max Karson has distributed 600 copies each of his four issues of the Yeti Newsletter, which he says is satire but which women's groups at CU say is offensive to women.

Ron Stump, vice chancellor for student affairs, told the Boulder Daily Camera this week that CU was looking at whether Karson was breaking any "student code of conduct" with his newsletter.

"We're looking into it from a legal perspective," Stump added.

That caught the attention of the Boulder County chapter of the ACLU.

"The ACLU is aware of no lawful limits that a public university may place upon the content of a self-published student newsletter such as Mr. Karson's," Judd Golden, chairman of the ACLU's Boulder County chapter, wrote in a letter to the university.

Golden said CU's response to controversial or offensive speech should be to "encourage more speech, not threaten legal action."

Karson, a psychology major, said Thursday he writes the newsletters to highlight issues that "people should be talking about but aren't talking about."

His article giving men tips on how to deny women pleasure during sex prompted the biggest uproar.

Women said it objectified them and was coarse and repugnant.

Karson agreed.

However, he said the purpose of the article was to "show how men see women as objects. I wanted to bring it out to light, to show how ridiculous it was that women are treated this way."

Stump said Thursday that he asked others at CU to review the matter, and they concluded that the newsletter "doesn't rise to the level of a violation of a student code of conduct."

But Stump also said it's the university's responsibility to let Karson know that his newsletter offended a lot of people.

Stump said that when he talked to Karson, "I told him that as a member of the (CU) community, you have a responsibility to try to protect it. His response was that he didn't think that was a concern of his."

Courts have made it clear that offensive speech isn't a crime and isn't subject to government regulation unless it puts a person in fear of bodily injury or imminent lawless action.

Golden said university codes of conduct, especially when paired with investigations of students, are chilling.

"We're very concerned with these vague threats. . . . 'You are under investigation.' . . . 'You may have done something unlawful,' " Golden said. "The code of conduct is the hammer they can use with little or no due process."

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