IN RESPONSE to the Thursday, Sept. 8 story in The Cavalier Daily about the meeting of the University Judiciary Committee's Ad Hoc Sub-committee for Sanctioning of Hate Crimes, I wish to present some counterarguments to the contention that the UJC should create additional or specific punishment guidelines for judicial offenses primarily motivated by hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion or disability. The subcommittee's task is to evaluate the way hate crimes have been handled by the UJC, and possibly to propose changes to the punishment guidelines. Such changes would presumably then be presented as a referendum.
First, imagine two victims, A and B, of crimes that are approximately identical, but in the case of A, there is a suspicion that the perpetrators were in part motivated by something that would classify the crime as a "hate crime." If both crimes come to trial, and the sentence given to the attackers of A is unambiguously more severe than the one given to the attackers of B and victim B is aware of this difference, do you think B will feel that justice has been done, or will they feel cheated? If I were victim B, I would feel cheated. You should ask yourself how you would feel if you were victim B. In order to provide justice, which should be the UJC's task, approximately identical crimes should warrant approximately identical punishments, not "severe punishment" (as the spring referendum said), supposedly in addition to the existing punishment, when the crime is thought to have been motivated by hate.
Second, I predict that the imposition of additional punishments for crimes thought to have been motivated by hate will lead to the attempt to enact restrictions on any act that can remotely be classified as motivated by or resulting in the expression of hate, such as trying to punish so called "hate speech." Of course, what classifies speech (or a crime's motivation) as hateful is a subjective judgment, and that is the very problem. Political speech -- which I personally feel should be uninhibited in any context, and especially within the academe (in fact, I would extend this protection to all expression within the academe) -- would then be practically limited, because students and professors would avoid saying anything that might get them into trouble with the various "authorities."
Finally, it should be noted that 12,096 students, or approximately 62 percent of all enrolled students, did not vote on the spring referendum, and that only approximately 27 percent of all enrolled students voted yes on this question. I'm not so sure that a sparsely-attended, likely unrepresentative UJC subcommittee is the best body to frame the discussion on this issue, but it will nonetheless decide what question is asked on the future referendum. Wouldn't it be better if student organizations with power werecomposed of a random selection of students? In this way diversity would be served, because in the long-run, as long as the population frequencies aren't changing, the percentages of specific ethnicities, political persuasions, religions, etc. on the committee would match the frequencies in the complete student body. And there is no concern about qualifications, since we were all admitted to the University, and ostensibly that is enough to qualify one for participation in such a committee.
I believe that initiatives like the spring referendum proposal are usually started by and meant to exclusively benefit certain groups at the expense of others, and that they are not necessary for, and in fact serve to inhibit, the functioning of an intellectually free academe and a nation founded on the principle of liberty.
Travis Hadley is a fourth year in the College.
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