Richard’s story in this post reminds me of is the Jake Baker case, in which a male student posted an explicit fantasy about raping and murdering a female classmate, and posted the story on Usenet, signing his own name. The story also named and described the student Baker fantasized about murdering.
After Baker’s story was noticed, the authorities searched his computer and found emails he was exchanging with a Canadian man he met online. In the emails, the two men were either planning to work together to carry out their rape/murder fantasies in real life, or (as Baker claimed) they were role-playing. Or, alternatively, Baker was role-playing but the man he was corresponding with was serious).
Baker was expelled from the university and charged with conspiracy to commit murder, but was found not guilty at trial. Several civil liberties organizations objected to Baker’s treatment, saying he had a free speech right to write his stories and exchange emails about fantasies.
I agreed with Baker’s expulsion.
1) Publicly posting a rape/murder fantasy about another student, including her name and description, isn’t behavior that colleges should tolerate. In a very real way, publishing the story was an attack on his fellow student.
2) It would have been unreasonable to expect the target of Baker’s fantasy to continue attending the same school as Baker; but if she and Baker can’t attend the same school, then Baker, as the one who created the situation, should be the one to go.
3) The University had to take a risk. If they expelled Jake Baker, they risked expelling a student who actually never would have physically harmed anyone, and was guilty mainly of having horrible fantasies. If they hadn’t expelled Jake Baker, they risked that eventually Baker’s fantasies would have turned into real-world attacks on female students. Given that choice, it’s better to risk expelling Baker than to risk not expelling Baker.
Since this case took place 15 years ago, it might seem strange to post about it now. It still feels relevant to me because the Jake Baker case was what convinced me to stop being a free speech absolutist.
Question: Does the expulsion have anything to do with his free speech? The trial does, for sure, but isn’t the expulsion the equivalent of getting fired, and thus doesn’t really have anything to do with free speech?
Sincere question, because I didn’t think I had any issues with free speech and I am also okay with his expulsion.
Even the most diehard free speech advocates, like myself, acknowledge the John Marshall ‘shouting fire in crowed theater’ exception. To me writing a story about someone you already know as using their real name in a murder/rape scenario, is an implied threat, like going up to someone and saying “I’m going to kill you.” Therefore it would not and should not be protected, I am surprised the ACLU took up this case.
Didn’t hear about this when it happened, but this part caught my eye:
Looking through the wiki article, it doesn’t look to me like there’s a civil-liberties objection to this; the university isn’t the federal government, and he isn’t being silenced. Aside from that, and a minor detail about your reason #3*, I think you’re pretty much right on the money here.
* namely this part:
I don’t think that’s what he’s guilty of; he actually did write the story in a public space, and then give every appearance of conspiring to commit rape and murder. Consider the (bizarre) hypothetical of someone who did everything he did, but didn’t actually have fantasies about this: Still guilty of everything he’s guilty of, and still deserves expulsion and, I think*, more criminal penalty than he ended up getting.
So they risked, at most, expelling someone who gave every appearance of conspiracy to commit rape and murder, and who looks to be guilty of transmitting a threat over state lines… even if he never actually would’ve done anything (and there isn’t reason to believe that he wouldn’t have), he’s still not innocent of wrongdoing; doesn’t look like there’s much risk of injustice in expelling the guy.
In shorter, he’s not just guilty of having the fantasies, even if someone does believe all of his defense.**
(*This opinion is based only on my reading of the wiki article, so I obviously don’t know any of the specifics of the case.)
(**And there’s no reason to believe it.)
I would find the pursuit of criminal charges problematical, but I have no problem with his expulsion. The civil liberties organizations are quite right that Jake had a right to publish his fantasies on-line. But the fact that doing so breaks no laws does not mean that he is therefore guaranteed that doing so is free of all other consequences.
@ RonF –
I’m pretty sure that his “roleplaying” rises to the level of conspiracy to commit rape and murder (which is a crime). Proving it might be tough, admittedly, but it certainly sounds like the charges would be worth pursuing.
His actions would run afoul of any reasonable sexual harassment policy.
Well, you may think so but given that he was found guilty apparently the jury didn’t. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t enough evidence to bring charges – I just meant that from what I see here there was reasonable doubt that he actually committed a crime.
But to create and publish a fantasy of rape and murder around a real person? That’s justification enough for expulsion.
Back when I was a student at MIT, in the early ’70’s, a female student decided to mock the concept of putative male locker room talk by publishing in Thursday, the “arts” weekly newspaper there at the time, reviews of some of the lovers she’d had. Names, places, dates/times, physical attributes, techniques, skill levels, etc. Summarized in a rating of 1 to 5 stars. I knew her, but not at a level where I was a candidate to be featured in the article. She told me later that after it came out she was brought before a group of administrators (I don’t remember what the name of the group was) and asked about her degree progress. Once it was determined that she could finish up her degree in that semester she was informed that she had better do so because it was her last semester at MIT. The exercise of free speech is not consequence-free.
Yeah, but from the perspective of the time (before the trial) I wouldn’t say there was anything problematical about pursuing charges against him; that was all I meant.
Emily WK and Jeremy P address the free speech issue pretty well, too; and yeah, I don’t think too many free-speech purists claim that it should be consequence-free (I’m not counting the people who think their own speech, and speech they agree with, should be consequence-free ;-)
A written description of the crime, complete with name…that’s clear-cut in my book. That arises to the level of a threat, however passive or implicit.
I guess the lesson is, change the names of the people in your snuff porn. If it had been putatively fictional, he’d have had a better case.
I don’t know if it matters but the university in question is a public university.
The real question is can a government entity such as a public university limit anyone’s speech for any reason and if so, should they. From what I understand about student codes of conduct, there is a lot of precedent for even public universities to limit speech of students so the expulsion is ok. The next question is should they? I tend to agree with Robert. If real names are used, then it can be considered harassment. If disturbing stories are presented with fictional names than say not although I wonder if it might be prudent to see about getting such a person some mental health services.
The criminal stuff is more tricky. I know that I have been known to say things like “I am so mad I could just kill her” or similar statements that are meant more to express the degree of my anger than an actual threat of murder. I imagine that most statements of the sort are like that. There is good reason to keep allowing people the freedom to say horrible things. The real question is when something crosses the line from a horrible thing to an actual threat.
Yeah, I think that the Jake Baker case is pretty clear cut. Definitely ground for expulsion and a restraining order, maybe ground for criminal punishment, thus the trial.
But if I remember correctly (I cannot find it) the story was not particularly realistic. It had stuff like penetrating and coming to a climax in the victim’s ear(?!)
Re 11: The story is linked from the Wikipedia article. I skimmed it; it’s very triggering and made me extremely angry. It is certainly realistic enough to scare the hell out of me if it were written about me. (I don’t recommend reading it.)
@les:
many free speech absolutists consider sexual harassment policies (most of which seem reasonable to me) to be violations of freedom of speech.
see: thefire.org
(more specifically, in this article they defend their classification of many schools’ harassment policies as unconstitutional: http://www.thefire.org/article/7934.html)
No action was taken against him for his fantasies. He was expelled because he acted on those fantasies by writing them out in a threatening manner, and engaging in behavior that was indistinguishable from the crime of conspiracy.
The fact that you had to link to the Wikipedia page on “Usenet” makes me feel out of touch, if not actually old.
On the substance: there seems to have been no way of giving him a sort of probation, or to clarify whether Baker intended to actually harm an actual person, that didn’t subject that actual person to an unacceptable level of risk. That solution might be to let him stay so long as he continually demonstrated that the fiction/fantasy was just that; the trouble with that approach is that he stops demonstrating this by attacking her (or at least might). Even if he’s allowed to stay on under the condition that he not interact with her or mention her in any way whatsoever, she has to live with the fear that his first interaction with her will be murder. For that matter, that does nothing to protect everyone else.
In the end, Baker did threaten a fellow student, or at least act in a way a reasonable person would find threatening, just by publishing the thing.
L:
A public university combines aspects of an educational institution and aspects of a government agency, and I think a distinction can often be made of when it is acting as which. Creating and enforcing a disciplinary code is an educational institution function and as such is no more a government action than MIT kicking out RonF’s friend.
Nice to see what looks like a bunch of so-called liberal men debating whether or not a guy should be permitted to write out his little fantasies of kidnapping, harassment, rape, torture, and murder. No mention of the effect on the lowly female victim. Who cares about her? Let’s talk about the man.