Censored at NMC
Have you experienced censorship at NMC?
Tell us about the how's and why's:
(Include your relation to NMC in your name please.)
posted by CENSORED! @ 10:32 PM
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CENSORED
NORTHWESTERN MICHIGAN COLLEGE STUDENT MAGAZINE BLOG Some thoughts to dwell on: What would our country be like if we couldn't speak our minds? What are some of the ways censorship has shaped the world around us? What happens to the knowledge that is lost when a book is banned? Do children miss out when parents keep media and ideas from them? Think about these ideas and explore your own as you roam around our digital seminar.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Tell us about the how's and why's:
(Include your relation to NMC in your name please.)
1 Comments:
NMC has generally valued openness and free expression when it comes to what students have to say creatively or critically. This is also true, for the most part, among faculty, in the classroom or in the exchanging ideas on campus and in the community.
It would be difficult to point to any current cases of censorship, though it's quite possible that NMC students and employees might practice self-censorship as a form of civility, "political correctness," or concern over grades or job security--even if no explicit restraints on expression are evident.
In the past, though, there have been a few situations at NMC that involved censorship--or attempts at it. One of the early literary publications on campus was removed from the bookstore and other distribution places in 1968-69 because of a creative autobio-graphical piece that was against the Vietnam War and punctuated with profanity and sexual content. That yearly magazine of student writing, called "LC" because it was sponsored by the Language Communication Department (aka English Department), produced some angry phone calls to the president's office, including one insisting on the firing of the faculty advisors/editors of the journal.
The matter went as far as NMC's Board of Trustess and the Student Government: Both bodies supported the publication, agreeing that its distribution on campus could be continued. After two more years, "LC" died a natural death--too costly to in time and money to keep up.
Later, a new publication called "Pine Cone Review" and sponsored by the Student Council's Cultural Activities Board met with disapproval and threats of censorship from within NMC, including a halt of distribution, because of a poem that alluded to the loss of the Great Lakes ore carrier "The Edmund Fitzgerald," and, as part of the poem's texture, a few "profanities." Again, the student governmental body supported the free expression represented by the poem and the publication, and it was allowed to be distributed.
Switch from print to radio, and another, more complex case of reprimand and constraint over public expression lies in NMC's past. In its still formative years, WNMC, the college's radio station, went through a crisis because of the often brazen outspokenness of one of its DJ's. Eventually he lost his volunteer position on the radio staff and other campus privileges. Was this censorship or justifiable restraint as part of the station's management and college policies regarding student responsibilities? It seemed at the time mostly driven by PR.
So on NMC's campus, over the years, there have been at least these occasions of attempted censorship or quasi-censorship, but when it came to written expression and publication, both college officials and elected student leaders defended the freedom of expression long associated with, though oten problematic within higher education.
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