University of Maryland students said they plan to screen a pornographic movie that was canceled after state lawmakers threatened to withhold funding, prompting another funding threat from one legislator.
Students at the university's flagship College Park campus have reserved a campus facility to show the film Monday night, while students at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County said they also hoped to show the film -- "Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge."
Kenton Stalder, a College Park junior who is organizing the screening, said he was inviting professors to moderate a discussion on free speech issues before the screening.
This goes back to an earlier blog post I wrote where I questioned the nature of freedom of speech with regard to private property rights.
The college campus is at least partially owned by the government, as it receives taxpayer dollars from the state (and most likely federal) government to support it. As such, the Maryland legislatures are well within their rights to dictate the policies of the campus. I am a firm believer that once the government subsidizes anything it, it effectively owns it. GM found that out the hard way last week and several small banks are finding it out now.
My solution to this mess? Privatize colleges. Privatize all of them and make them dependent on the tuition of the students and donations of the alumni. Eliminate tenure as well, as it will make the professor actually have to teach students rather than showing pornography in class. That way, the campus becomes owned by private entities and allows for deans to reject such ridiculous and perverse student activities without the whole freedom of speech debate.
And let's be honest: what does watching pornography on a college campus have to do with freedom of speech? From what I understand about the first amendment, it's about preventing Congress from silencing peaceful dissent. This blog, on occasion, is an example of me exercising my free speech rights.
Freedom of speech has be perverted as a concept in this nation, largely by the college campus university culture that seeps through to the rest of us via activist groups and left-wing, secular political movements. It's high time we made a concentrated effort to devalue college education (which is doing a fairly good job on its own) and focused instead on meaningful education for the next generation.
And let's all agree that this student activity is not freedom of speech, but a bunch of horny young men with no shame trying to get their favorite porn movie on the UMD campus' big screen.