Althouse: Commenting dispairingly and disparagingly...

November 6, 2015

Commenting dispairingly and disparagingly...

... on the students at the University of Missouri Law School.

46 comments:

James Pawlak said...: If they do not understand the First Amendment, perhaps they should attend to the Second Amendment and President Jefferson's "Final Solution" for tyrants.; 11/6/15, 10:26 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: "I believe the children are our future..."; 11/6/15, 10:31 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: @James Pawlak

It's not that the Left doesn't understand the First Amendment -- they understand it, they just don't agree with it. They believe large chunks of speech should be censored - the two most notable are "hate speech" (subjectively defined by them) and "campaign speech" (particularly funded by wealthy constituents).

Basically, they are mini-Totalitarians.; 11/6/15, 10:38 AM
Quaestor said...: Every once in while it becomes necessary to tamp down the totalitarian will to power with a suitably sized can of Whup Ass.; 11/6/15, 10:45 AM
robother said...: Maybe Reason isn't giving enough credit to these Missouri Law students: they are NOT literally discouraging disparaging comments, only comments that speak "despairingly" of others, i.e., comments suggesting that there is no hope for the person.

In that spirit, I remain hopeful that the U of Missouri Law School will educate these students on the First Amendment, or failing that, on basic grammar and/or spelling.; 11/6/15, 10:48 AM
bleh said...: It bothers me that this policy might only have come under scrutiny due to bad spelling. If censors in academia learn to proofread their speech codes, then what?; 11/6/15, 11:00 AM
Birches said...: Wow. just Wow.; 11/6/15, 11:12 AM
traditionalguy said...: That is hilarious. Lawyers in waiting who are being commanded that they cannot argue that the others are bad.

Do we call what's left argument from behind/flattery? Can they even post, "Friends, Romans and countrymen, lend me your ears... etc., which is a veiled criticism?; 11/6/15, 11:14 AM
TWW said...: The decline in Law School admission standards brought home...; 11/6/15, 11:14 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: If you don't know the difference between despairingly and disparagingly and you are in law school, you are getting ripped off.; 11/6/15, 11:14 AM
Sebastian said...: @BAG: "they understand it, they just don't agree with it."

Exactly. They want to be Europe, where, among other things, you can prosecute/persecute people for Islamophobia and related sins.; 11/6/15, 11:20 AM
Rick said...: Ron Winkleheimer said...
If you don't know the difference between despairingly and disparagingly and you are in law school, you are getting ripped off.

When two things are confused it often helps to associate them with a saying that clears up the confusion, I suggest this:

The left writes about the First Amendment disparagingly.

The right writes about the First Amendment despairingly.; 11/6/15, 11:26 AM
Fernandinande said...: HoodlumDoodlum said...
"I believe the children are our future..."

Poor, nasty, brutish and short.; 11/6/15, 11:29 AM
Fernandinande said...: http://law.missouri.edu/sba/files/2015/10/SocialMediaPolicyMULawSBA.pdf
404 — File not found.

Volokh copy here.; 11/6/15, 11:34 AM
Dan Hossley said...: I wonder how many students fail to pass the course at the U of M law school? Obviously, not enough.; 11/6/15, 11:36 AM
ThreeSheets said...: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite
jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a
thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is!
My gorge rises at it.

D'OH!; 11/6/15, 11:38 AM
Henry said...: Looks like despair has won:

Social Media Policy– Due to an extensive amount of Feedback from SBA members we have decided to remove the current policy pending revisions. Public comment will be forthcoming for SBA members to engage in discourse of the revised policy and guidelines.
At No point will there be any Academic Discipline imposed on students for a violation of SBA Policies.
http://law.missouri.edu/sba/governance-documents/; 11/6/15, 11:43 AM
Richard Dolan said...: This effort at imposing a speech code is sillier than most. But it's less interesting for the malapropisms than for the fact that the powers that be in a university setting still feel the need to come up with these codes.

Yet they never come to grips with the basic structural problem whenever such an attempt is made. The people coming up with all these speech codes -- university administrators usually, but also the occasional hapless student group -- have the impossible task of legislating without the benefit of any hard and fast rules defining the boundaries of permissible restrictions on speech. In contrast, the courts have spent much time and effort trying to define those boundaries, as it happens not entirely successfully. In the university setting, the lack of such boundaries ends up producing these silly codes, all of which amount to a riff on a requirement that speakers in that forum must "be nice" to others. Those codes never work, and in practice permit blatant discrimination in how they are applied.

When it's a public university imposing the codes, any student against whom they are applied has an easy time in court shooting them down. FIRE and similar organizations have had so much success that we are at the point where a letter from them to a university president, with the threat of litigation in which the university will have to pay the plaintiff's fees, is often enough to force the university to end the silliness.

Funny how America's teachers in these institutions of higher learning are such slow learners that the same lesson has to be repeated over and over again.; 11/6/15, 11:49 AM
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...: At No point will there be any Academic Discipline imposed on students for a violation of SBA Policies.

But you may be subjected to mocking, disparagement, shunning, or any combination thereof.; 11/6/15, 11:52 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Comment #20, and counting.; 11/6/15, 11:57 AM
Quaestor said...: But you may be subjected to mocking, disparagement, shunning, or any combination thereof.

All in the name of greater inclusiveness, naturally.; 11/6/15, 12:01 PM
DanTheMan said...: The policy was self-violating, as it prohibited posting of anything liable to cause mental distress.; 11/6/15, 12:02 PM
Fernandinande said...: Fernandinande said...
Volokh copy here.

Aliens put an extraneous " at the end of the URL...

www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/blog/MissouriSocialMediaPolicy.html; 11/6/15, 12:11 PM
Bob Ellison said...: Well, we can't expect students to know what 42-18 is.; 11/6/15, 12:13 PM
Real American said...: "RULE 4: 'Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.' If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity’s very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)"

The only way to make these universities stop with this censorship crap is to make them live by their own rules. Conservative and libertarian students need to file complaint after complaint after complaint, day after day after day, against the leftard students, professors and administrators who make "offensive" remarks against Christians, Jews, straights, whites, conservatives, libertarians, normal people, etc. These people need to be overwhelmed by the administrative cost of trying to censor speech in the name of whatever social justice garbage they're spewing. If these people deem everything to be offensive, then make them pay for it. Make them live by their own rules. Eventually, they'll get the message.; 11/6/15, 12:25 PM
MaxedOutMama said...: Hmm. What's the bar exam pass rate been like?; 11/6/15, 12:58 PM
Hagar said...: Never mind the bar exam. What about English I and II?; 11/6/15, 1:04 PM
Hagar said...: Actually, that would be where they came from wouldn't it? You have to have a bachelor's degree before you can enter law school, right?; 11/6/15, 1:06 PM
Mary Beth said...: They're not blaming it on auto-correct? Although that would only explain the word choice, not the need to tell everyone what to do and say.; 11/6/15, 1:07 PM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: I'd also argue that if you graduated college not knowing the difference between despairingly and disparagingly you were ripped off.; 11/6/15, 1:07 PM
Virgil Hilts said...: Not meaning to speak either despairingly or disparagingly, but there's no hope for these losers.; 11/6/15, 1:21 PM
Big Mike said...: I wrote despairingly about a girlfriend back in the day. I thought she wanted out our relationship, and indeed she did. But then I found a better woman at a party just two weeks later. And I married the better woman.

Fortunately the Internet was still decades away from being invented, much less social media.

BTW, says something about the University of Missouri law school that they accept people who don't know the difference between despairing and disparaging. Were their LSAT scores down in the double digit range?; 11/6/15, 1:30 PM
Jim said...: http://law.missouri.edu/sba/files/2015/10/SBA-Meeting-Minutes-October.pdf
This document passed11-0 with 3 abstaining.; 11/6/15, 1:44 PM
lgv said...: USN&WR rankings be damned. I think Missou is going to take a hit. If I were a recruiter, I would skip this campus.; 11/6/15, 2:15 PM
sean said...: If I were going to comment disparagingly about anyone, it would be law professors. The existence of this policy indicates a massive failure by the University of Missouri faculty to teach their students basic First Amendment law. I have noticed that lawprof bloggers are always quick to mock and criticize law students, but very reluctant to criticize other law professors or law school administrators. So much for tenure giving people the freedom to speak fearlessly!; 11/6/15, 2:37 PM
Kirk Parker said...: Why? They are self-desparaging quite adequately.; 11/6/15, 2:52 PM
smitty said...: It used to be that second rate students went to teachers' college, now they go to law school.; 11/6/15, 3:27 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Do not comment despairingly on others. No more, "I have no hope for her," "All cause for him is lost," or "I am resigned that my faith in them has forever died."

Maybe they were having a problem with depressive social media bullying.; 11/6/15, 4:59 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Facebook status by Amy: "I despair for Tara."
Comment by Luke: "I know. I've lost heart in regards to her."
Comment by Devon: "Tara anguishes me, and I find no reprieve."
Comment by Brooke: "By Tara melancholy overtakes me, and I am wholly defeated."
Comment by Anna: "My bones are brittle. They crack beneath me. My mouth is of cotton and sand. I pour out into the dust of the earth. All for the sake of Tara."
Comment by Kevin: "My marrow is gone, dried within me. My life withers. It is a wisp and then gone. Oh, wretched disconsolation! Oh, cheerless gloom! How you gather about me! I cannot but resign unto misery and dejection. I beg for death. It is Tara who is the source of my despond!"; 11/6/15, 5:14 PM
Anonymous said...: Related: Yalie mistakes university for Daddy.; 11/6/15, 5:57 PM
fizzymagic said...: Even in their attempt at a retraction they can't do it right:

Social Media Policy– Due to an extensive amount of Feedback from SBA members we have decided to remove the current policy pending revisions. Public comment will be forthcoming for SBA members to engage in discourse of the revised policy and guidelines.
At No point will there be any Academic Discipline imposed on students for a violation of SBA Policies.

They don't understand how to capitalize correctly and they misuse yet another word: "forthcoming."

These people are the future of law? Sad, indeed.; 11/6/15, 7:24 PM
Anonymous said...: Look on my works, ye mighty, and disparage.; 11/6/15, 7:57 PM
ErnieG said...: The Speech Code has been pulled down, and a 404 results. The Wayback Machine gives this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20151106020553/http://law.missouri.edu/sba/files/2015/10/SocialMediaPolicyMULawSBA.pdf; 11/6/15, 8:04 PM
BN said...: Yeah, yeah, but did they get it right in the Spanish version?; 11/6/15, 10:49 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 11/7/15, 5:03 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: Is it ok to comment despairagialistically of shit swastikas, or does it depend on whose shit is in the swastika?; 11/7/15, 5:06 PM