Hostile Environment (Dee Speaking)
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						Malik

I don't know how far we can take the analogy between a hostile work environment and hate speech on campus. It is clearly not perfect, and some of the differences matter.

• In the workplace, the people creating the hostile environment are employees and agents of the employer. But students using racist language on campus are not employees or agents of the university. It isn't clear to what extent we can hold the university legally responsible for their actions or how far the university is legally obligated to control those actions.

• Employees have work assignments and they usually have to remain in certain places at certain times to do their work. In this way, they are a "captive audience." But students have much more freedom of movement. If one instructor is a racist, they can usually avoid him.

• Employees may not be able to fight back on the job. But on a campus, if a racist political rally is held, students can hold a counter rally.

But, more importantly, remember that we are talking about the code here at Midwest University. That particular code covers much more than the kind of language that can plausibly be said to create a hostile environment. It has already been used against students making more or less innocuous comments in class. I'm thinking of the student who remarked that he had heard that minority students had a hard time in a certain class. So even if we could constitutionally ban a narrow range of speech that created a hostile environment, our code would be too broad and too vague.

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