University Threatens Criminal Charges Over Firefly Poster

[Kiwilove]

I can understand objecting to the first poster if you have no pop culture chops whatsoever/ are ultra uptight to begin with, but the second one basically said fascism = bad.
How is that an inappropriate message, exactly? (yes, I know it was a not very veiled insult at the campus police, but still)

 

[emeraldrafael]

This seems excessive but Im in agreement. That poster doesnt need to be hung up.

 

[Faela]

Seriously???!!! OMG, Freedom of speech people..... dude... wow, just wow.... the level of stupid is seriously impressive.

On a different note, I would SO take that profs class!!!

 

[Vicarious Reality]

The first poster was justly taken down since it had some random person with a directly threatening quote
The second poster didn't threaten anyone but they could ask him to take it down anyway since it's in rather poor taste

 

[Unesh52]

This might be technically unrelated, but they recently made my old high school math teacher take down all his nerd posters. He had tons of Marvel and DC, Battlestar Galactica... it's just not fair. Some old fart in a pressed shirt thinks something isn't in the spirit of "proper schooling," so he feels he has every right to take it away from us. It makes my head hurt. That guy is one of the best teachers in the school, and how do they reward him? By stripping him of his individuality.

Fucking bastards...

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Yes, because a poster promising only to use lethal force when absolutely necessary and not a moment before is obviously "threatening".

For Christ's Sake! These people are at University. More than that, they are running the University. They are supposed to represent the best and brightest of society. There is no excuse for them being this stupid!

If anyone needs me I'll be in the corner... crying.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

The first poster was justly taken down since it had some random person with a directly threatening quote
The second poster didn't threaten anyone but they could ask him to take it down anyway since it's in rather poor taste

The first poster was not directed at anything or anyone. It was a quote from a TV show. Besides, it's not even a threat!

The second one probably was in bad taste, but this is a University after all. Anyone there who can't take a bit of provocative or strongly political imagery really needs to man up. So long as it is not racist, sexist, or anything to that effect (which it wasn't) then I think we can trust a bunch of people who are over the age of 18 and smart enough to go to uni to handle it.

 

[Unesh52]

The first poster was justly taken down since it had some random person with a directly threatening quote
The second poster didn't threaten anyone but they could ask him to take it down anyway since it's in rather poor taste

The quote from the first poster is stern, not threatening. It says if I kill you. Not "take this gun so I can feel justified shooting you." It's about honorable confrontation -- an insistence on a fair fight. There's nothing threatening about a fair fight, even if it's (understandably) intimidating since it's coming from Nathan Fillian.

They were being overly sensitive, and they only contrived the excuse that the second one was "threatening" because it was pointing out how wrong they were in the first place, embarrassing them. I don't believe for a second that this has anything to do with the interest of the student body. It's an authority figure strutting around trying to display his power and a man standing up against that pretentious gesture when that authority take a few too many cocky steps over the line. I hope they have to give him paid vacation for a month.

 

[RootBrewski]

Wow, the only thing I can say is that's pretty stupid of them, especially for a university.

It actually reminds me of when I was in high school, and there was some kind of guest speaker that was supposed to help us with our goals, and the guy legitimately asked me "What is best in life?"

I responded "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of their women."

I got sent to the office and was facing consequences for my "advocation of murder and rape"

 

[Undead Dragon King]

I'm not surprised at all by this. This is the University of Wisconsin-Madison we're talking about here.

It's one of the bastions of political correctness in the Midwest US, and could never stand to have anything remotely edgy coming from its progessive, illuminated faculty... a poor student could be traumatized by it! Think of what would happen if he tried to turn in his shoddy, grossly plagiarized term paper that he haphazardly wrote up the night before and saw this poster of mean old Malcolm Reynolds threatening him with death! He would suffer a nervous breakdown then and there!

THINK OF THE STUDENTS!!!!!

[/dripping sarcasm, except for the terrible plagiarized term papers that pass inspection nowadays...]

 

[Darks63]

Loved the second poster shows hes a cheeky bastard loves those types of professors.

 

[antipunt]

In my universe, everyone in a university is already a legal adult

 

[Genixma]

It's not FOX for once...is it 2012 already?

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Two things:

One, that first poster isn't even a real threat. I'm glad to know that the kind of hardcore reading comprehension tasks they make people undergo for entrance to grad school aren't considered as necessary for the people who actually work there.

Two, this sounds like any university anywhere in the world right now. The amount of fucking stupid administration staff has tripled over the past decade, and it's impossible to get anything done at uni now without being caught in a nightmare of bureaucracy and pen-pushers who defend what little power they've been given to the letter. My recent request for leave almost got turned down because they said I had the wrong signature on the form. As it later transpired the form itself has the wrong thing written on it.

 

[circularlogic88]

Why did everyone at the university pussy-foot around the real issue? They couldn't just say that the poster made them feel uncomfortable? That it might have others think about the various campus incidents that have occurred in the US over the past few years?

Having said that they really should have just talked to him about it rather than this official idiocy. The uni is within it's rights to ask him to take it down for any reason it wants so why not just ask?

That's my biggest problem with how this was handled. Everyone involved acted like petulant children. Rather than confronting the key issue, which was the fact that it was making them feel uncomfortable about past college campus incidents in the US, they have to try and say everything and anything other than what the university really means. What happened to being civilized? This should never have escalated past the first poster.

If the professor had a legitimate grievance with being censored, then his first course of action should not have been to see how much further he could push his own boundaries with the campus police.

 

[Pandaman1911]

Seems logical, what with all the school shootings and whatnot. Better safe than sorry. A shame he didn't think stuff through. You know. Like professors are supposed to do?