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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

In Canada this week, my girlfriend is required to visit the dean of a [top Canadian law school] for calling a girl a "bitch" on Twitter.

Backstory is interesting, because the girl had bullied her in person at school. GF never identified the girl on Twitter only saying "Some bitch blah blah at school today". But because she mentioned the school name, the dean found out and now wants to talk to her.

There's apparently a policy against certain language at the schools which is enforced by the very highest people.

Fortunately shes defending her right to freedom of expression (as any lawyer-in-training would) and refusing to delete the tweet. But the thought of students having to censor themselves because they are now a member of a school (which they paid $50k+ to join) is scary.

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Old Soviet joke:

"The Soviet Union is just like the United States. In the US, you can criticize the American President. In the USSR, you can also criticize the American President!"

Sure, that was in 1988. This is 2013, you can criticize the Russian president, but you can't criticize the American president because he is listening.

The Russian president rides a bear. You can't criticize that.

You can criticize moobs though. Even if they're bear mounted moobs.

To be fair, he is 60. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't look fantastic without a shirt on these days, and dianabol is a hell of a drug...

Interesting how silent we are. Obama is way worse than Bush ever was.

Silent? I've seen way more criticism of Obama than I ever did of Bush.

You have GOT to be kidding us.

I am not. Republicans are reluctant to criticize their own, and so Bush got criticized almost solely from the left. Obama gets a lot of criticism from both left and right.

While he may get criticism from both sides of the political aisle, the criticism has not yet passed over into popular culture. Just as one crude barometer, comedians are not yet making their livings lampooning Obama (well, you see it on the Comedy Central 'satire news' lineup, but not yet the Comedy Central 'standup special' lineup.)

Give it another year or three and we might get there (particularly if this Syria shit goes Obama's way...).

I think there's a substantial difference between fun-making and serious criticism. I do see less of the former with Obama, but that's just because Bush was so much easier to make fun of. He was prone to gaffes, spoke just enough like a redneck to make the association, and didn't take things too seriously. Obama is too boring to make fun of effectively.

But in terms of actual criticism, Obama has way more. Everybody is upset with him on health care reform, just for different reasons. Everybody is upset with him on the economy, they just have different remedies in mind. Everybody is upset with him on Libya and Syria.

Worse? Good lord, Bush was on watch during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, housing collapse, stock market crash, two economic recessions, the hurricane Katrina debacle, tortured people in Gitmo and started two unwinnable wars.

Someone has a short memory.

Don't forget the bailouts too!

I don't know, apparently 20% of the US believes him to be the anti-Christ. I wouldn't really call that silent.

Please enlighten me on why he is worse?

Just wanting to talk to her does not seem inappropriate.

Lawyers in particular are expected to chose their words carefully and keep decorum. Perhaps it's a teachable moment.

Lawyers are expected to win. If you want to hire a lawyer because of their decorum go right ahead.

The judge will enforce the decorum of his courtroom, and you don't want to be a lawyer on the receiving end of that.

The decorum each judge sets is their own, and it's not necessarily overly formal, especially if it isn't required by the rules of court.

Come on, we've all been to school. Unless it's your graduation party, the dean never wants to "just talk", like, you know, grab a beer or two together.

Students represent their school, so no surprise a top law school would crack down on students spouting shit on Twitter, certainly when they also mention the school in their tweet.

Wanting to spend time talking to her about an offhand, benign comment on social media doesn't seem "inappropriate", but it does seem ridiculous and intrusive.

> But the thought of students having to censor themselves because they are now a member of a school (which they paid $50k+ to join) is scary.

Um. This has basically been true throughout the entire history of law schools. The only significant difference is the amount they paid to get in.

Likely the school has a code of conduct which includes a prohibition on bullying. That's a bit different from censorship.

I don't think expecting basic good judgment of those in law school is 'scary'. Further it is worth mentioning that hateful speech is not protected in Canada, and while you could say that it was but a response, such a tweet is almost certainly in violation of several new anti-'cyber' bullying restrictions.

So in your world "Some bitch at school did x" falls under hateful speech/cyber-bullying?

Well, I guess by now we have to prosecute half of the YouTube and Twitter population. After all all those "first" posters are most certainly making a highly discriminatory remark against all those coming "second".

No, stfu, my "world" isn't quite so black and white: The choice isn't between prosecution or free-for-all, but if you're trying to incite freedom of expression over hateful speech, all while bringing disrepute upon a law school, you probably aren't going to get very far.

I don't think using a mild profanity on twitter constitutes "expecting good judgement of those in law school" it seems like vast overreach to me and as long as we accept moments like this in any form it will do nothing but get worse.

If the graffiti of Pompeii is any indication humans want to be short, crass and coarse and I am okay with that and I think that is something we should accept and embrace as a society and culture. We give too much power to words when in fact it is the listener who derives the negative experience not the speaker.

>while bringing disrepute upon a law school

Quite a feat, I would say.

The claims that a benign, offhand comment on social media will bring the school into "disrepute" is absurd. The fact that claims like this are becoming increasingly common would indicate that the West (or perhaps just North America) is slowly retreating from the idea of reasonable individual freedom of expression.

What absurd responses, though hardly unexpected given the story. Rabble rabble rabble!

An institution gains disrepute through many actions over time. This particular action is very small, just as the response is. Hysterical responses as if she were sent the gallows denote a complete inability of so many to discuss a complex topic without instantly jerking to an extreme. But there is no extreme.

And the whole slippery slope thing is simply nonsense. The idea that you represent such institutions when you go out of your way to incant it has been true throughout history.

"Rabble rabble rabble!" Oh the little people and their tiresome concern for freedom and dignity.

It's not absurd, or hysterical, to be concerned about people being interrogated for reasonable, completely normal forms of expression.

The slippery slope thing isn't nonsense. Society changes incrementally. Over longer timeframes continual incremental changes in a certain direction become recognizable trends.

I think it all depends on the contract between the girl and the school. Did she agree to such restrictions on a 24/7 basis?

hateful speech is not protected in Canada

How do they prove that a speech is hateful instead of merely being ordinarily contemptuous?

they don't.

speech is not protected in Canada

Is that better?

Just talking abstractly (again, the only reason I mentioned that is that saying "free speech!" is a non-starter when you're calling someone a bitch -- even if unnamed, if any other party could identify who you mean, it isn't anonymous -- and bringing disrepute upon an institution), but Canadian rights are generally based upon the idea that your rights end where my nose begins, and your right to free speech ends when you intrude on the rights of others not to be harassed, disparaged, etc. Rights go both ways, and there is a balance to be found somewhere in the middle.

Westboro is a hate group, by Canadian law. Their hateful protests are actionable.

We have a new crop of anti-bullying laws -- particularly focused on the online world -- because the speaker can't fallback on the notion that their speech is protected, because it isn't.

So calling an idiot an idiot is not an option in Canada?

In 19th and early 20th century medicine and psychology, an "idiot" was a person with a very severe mental retardation

PC police will probably getcha for that, too.

>We have a new crop of anti-bullying laws

Please cite the specific law that would make a single mention of an unnamed "bitch" criminal.

I say it is not protected speech. You ask me to prove it is criminal. I see this discussion is futile.

> Further it is worth mentioning that hateful speech is not protected in Canada

It's worth noting that speech is just speech. There's no objective definition for what constitutes hateful speech, nor should there be.

If there's someone on a street corner shouting that all black people should be killed, you're perfectly free to ignore him and his ideas. You could perhaps even tell him that he's being an idiot.

But someone else might be saying something worth listening to, even if it didn't happen to align with your current views.

Hateful speech, such as calling someone a moron, an idiot, a dummy, a bitch, a fool, etc, is not the same as hate speech.

I have no doubt you are aware of this.

You are probably also aware that on the issue of laws regulating "hate speech" in Canada, which have generally been upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, these laws are by Province and Territory. Saskatchewan’s Human Rights Code defines it one way, Alberta has another, B.C. has another, and the Northwest Territories have another.

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