Individuals within a university community must be generally
empowered to select--without university censorship--what they
need to access for their learning, teaching, research, and personal
purposes; but what are the limits to this individual empowerment?
Does one empowered individual who chooses to access information
that may be considered offensive or threatening to another have the
right to access it in a way that crosses beyond his/her own personal
space and boundaries?
Questions of this nature are central to decisions regarding all
types of potentially offensive material (not just that which is
considered pornographic), and the issues they raise are complicated
by the different forms in which information may be delivered. Some
information will exist in graphic form; some in text only; some
information will contain, or primarily consist of, sound. Each form
requires a careful examination of its effects on other individuals,
because some forms of information are more intrusive into the
personal work/learning space of other people than are others. If
material that is accessed by one individual contains audible sound,
for example, are there reasons to restrict its access in a shared
worksite where others also work? A recent incident at one university
will illustrate the issue.
A student, bored with his assignments, developed a method for
loading a sound segment onto machines in a public computing site.
He placed the faked orgasm sound segment from the movie When
Harry Met Sally on all the machines. When a user turned on a
machine, the entire sound segment played without their having a
method for disengaging the sequence until it was completed.
Sound can so readily permeate an environment that its
potential for disturbance to others is obvious. Administrators may
decide that sound is intrusive to the personal work space of others
and therefore should be restricted regardless of content.
Visual images or printed matter may be harder to understand
in terms of interpersonal space. Is a visual image, accessed by one
individual, intrusive to the personal work space of others, and
therefore to be restricted, particularly if the content is offensive?
University and college communities will need to contemplate the
scope and importance of an individual's work space. Within a public
computing site, for instance, how do we define individual space? Does
it comprise the workstation, desk, and chair, or does it include all of
the workstations, desks and chairs within the viewing range of the
individual?
At one university a young woman wrote, I am a Ph.D. student
in my last semester at this University. I am working in a public
worksite and feel that I should be able to finish my work for this
degree without having to feel uncomfortable and intimidated by
those around me. When I look up from this workstation I see, on a
machine just two workstations away, pictures of nude females that I
consider offensive and embarrassing. Does the University owe me
anything in terms of my ability to finish my work for this degree
without having to feel uncomfortable and intimidated?
What can we say to individuals who access offensive messages
or visual images of any type, about intrusion into the space of the
others who are working nearby? Does a university or college have
any responsibility in this regard? I think the answer is yes.
Such institutions have an opportunity to lead through an
educational effort--not to censor--but instead to proactively
encourage individuals to think about the needs, rights, and values of
others. Other options--such as restricting a person's access to
potentially offensive material to certain machines within a public
site, or requiring only nonpublic access for material that might be
considered offensive--move the community unnecessarily and
dangerously toward censorship. Instead, by encouraging individuals
to ask each other to be considerate of others' reactions to offensive
material and to ask them to consider a less intrusive site for
accessing it, is to encourage community sensitivity and social
thinking.
By proactively anticipating such situations, an institution can
make a divisive topic into an opportunity for community growth.
Providing discussions and education about empowerment and about
the rights of all individuals--those who wish to access such material
and those who do not--avoids censorship, while moving the
community towards sensitivity and responsiveness. Experience with
this approach at two universities has shown that the majority of
those who engage in unconscious intrusion into another's space
respond positively to such suggestions and learn from the encounter.
At one university, students working in a multiple window
environment on public site workstations were accustomed to
displaying a variety of material beside their text documents while
they worked. On several machines, students had one of their
available windows displaying, at one-minute intervals, pictures of
nude women in various provocative poses. While the student typed a
paper, he was entertained by the changing photos. Women at that
university, a significant minority on the campus, found that working
in the public sites was often uncomfortable and felt intrusive. They
found it difficult to work next to public stations where such displays
were active. They questioned their rights to a work and learning
environment free from such stress and embarrassment. When the
male students were asked to consider accessing that material from a
more private space, the vast majority of them agreed to do so and
expressed regret for their unconscious insensitivity.
Within each community, however, there are those who
purposefully expose others to material they may find offensive.
Should we consider all such purposeful acts as harassment? The
answer has to be no, for what is offensive to one may not be
offensive to another. Some will appreciate, enjoy, or find useful the
delivery of the material.
There are increasing numbers of incidents on university and
college campuses involving individuals who, after exercising their
right to access material, purposefully use it to intrude on the work or
private space of another individual. They send it to the machine of
an unsuspecting user, place it into the files of an unsuspecting group,
or send it to a public printer that is used by an unsuspecting group.
These acts are generally designed for comic or shock value.
Sometimes, however, they are designed to target, threaten,
intimidate, and/or harass another person. In these cases the
empowered individual anticipates that the recipient will find the
material offensive, yet purposefully intrudes. A young man on a
college campus, having obtained an explicit narrative describing
adult sexual behavior with a five-year-old female, sent a message to
one of his classmates saying, Since this story is about your namesake,
Karen, and I thought you would find it quite offensive, I decided to
send it to you. An individual sent a racist message in broad print to a
public printer and waited for the reactions which she received. A
student sent a file of pornographic images to a class account that a
group of students were required to access for their daily assignment.
A young woman, though asked to stop sending electronic mail to an
unwilling recipient, continued to send daily solicitations for lesbian
sex, including increasingly intimidating descriptions of the acts to be
committed, and the violence that would be involved.
Should a university or college administrator intervene in these
interpersonal conflicts? Should a university take a position regarding
the kind of work and study environment it provides on its campus?
Is there a critical educational and disciplinary process that should be
followed?
It would be difficult to view even a sampling of the
pornography that exists on the networks, in certain news groups, or
in some of the files collected by individuals on the campuses, as
benign artistic expressions. Few women could view the bestial
reduction of females in pornographic pictures involving animals and
not feel hurt or frightened--hurt for the women who participated in
the making of the pictures, frightened that the possibility even exists
that someone could place them in such a situation against their will.
Few women could see the repeated emphasis placed on dominance
and power in pornography and not rage at it. Few could recognize the
themes of violence or, minimally, the symbolized hurtful sexual
entry into all orifices and not quiver with fear that such acts might
be possible or cry for those for whom such acts have occurred in real
life. To suggest that being forced to view these pictures unwittingly
or unwillingly is anything but an act of intimidation and violence is
to be so involved in the power struggle for rights as to be blinded by
the obvious.
This is not about an individual's right to access material. It is
about another individual's rights to choose not to access or be
exposed to the material. This is about a small number of individuals
intentionally intruding into the private, personal, work and
psychological space of other people--to assert their power at the
expense of another's while distorting and hiding behind First
Amendment Rights.
The university's proactive role begins by aggressive protection
against censorship and by reinforcement of First Amendment rights
for its community of faculty, staff and students. It continues through
extensive education and increased awareness for incidents in which
an individual's access to information is questioned by another based
on content. We must discuss and teach the critical role of academic
freedom and the importance of essential individual liberties within
universities and colleges.
The university's proactive role must continue, however, by
raising awareness to the effects of unintentional intrusion by one
individual upon another. Its role in discipline and intervention
increases significantly when acts of purposeful intrusion and
harassment occur. To ignore such acts is to enable the disintegration
of a community, to allow hostilities and misunderstandings to
increase, and to allow the disempowering of some individuals within
the community as the expense for empowering others.
The topic of electronic access to potentially offensive material
and pornography may not have a political win within it, but it has a
tremendous learning-teaching win for institutions of higher learning.
This is a learning moment. If we are to achieve Boyer's notions of an
open, just, and disciplined community where freedom of expression
and civility are affirmed, where persons are honored and valued, and
where individuals will exercise self-discipline for the sake of others,
electronic access to potentially offensive material is a topic we must
engage. It is a topic around which learning and teaching can be built.
It is an opportunity to teach and reinforce essential liberties while
empowering all individuals.
A longer version of this paper was presented at SIGUCCS '94.