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St. Cloud State University
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First Amendment forum tackles hate speech
By Chad Eldred
Published:
Thursday, April 7, 2005
The 33rd annual First Amendment Forum will address the issue of hate speech in a free speech society April 15 at SCSU.� Rabbi David Saperstein, co-chair of the Coalition to Preserve Religious Liberty, will be the keynote speaker. Other prominent figures scheduled to appear at the event include St. Cloud Mayor John Ellenbecker and Mark Ochu, president of the St. Cloud NAACP.
Hate speech was the topic of the event 12 years ago, but recent events on the SCSU campus and throughout the country, have brought the topic to the forefront, said Bill Huntzicker, assistant professor of journalism at SCSU.
"Given the passionate reaction to our male homecoming queen, to the continuing conflict over religious symbols and a number of other issues on campus, I thought it might be a good time to return to that subject," Huntzicker said.
Ultimately, the response to Fue Khang's homecoming election triggered the idea of bringing back hate speech as the event's topic, Huntzicker said.
"The reaction to the homecoming queen, some of it has been hate speech and there are people who apparently hate him even though he has not been at all public," Huntzicker said. "He is not trying to be a symbol of anything; he was just the student government's candidate for homecoming queen and the kind of reaction that he got says that there is something going on here that maybe we ought to be talking about."
Huntzicker believes that the First Amendment right of free speech should apply to everyone, even those who participate in hate speech, because people's thoughts or feelings should not be suppressed.
"If somebody has hate in their heart, you can't censor that; that is our right as much as we don't like it," Huntzicker said. "If we start passing laws trying to get into people's heads and censoring their thoughts and their speech, that is crossing the line."
The purpose of the First Amendment Forum will be to respectfully discuss how to coexist in a world full of diverse groups, Huntzicker said.
"Our goal is to talk about tolerance in a diverse society," Huntzicker said. "We need to figure out how to live together peacefully and that is what we want to try and talk about. I want to have these diverse groups sit down and have a civil conversation about it."
All students and community members are welcome to attend the free event, but Huntzicker said that journalism students might find a special interest in the discussion.
"Our largest constituency are journalism students," Huntzicker said. "They are going into a future of a very diverse world. Most of our students here at St. Cloud State are white students, but it is not going to be very long to where a majority of people in this country are not white people from middle America. Students have to learn how to work in a diverse society and this should be good training for them."
Kristy Heltemes, a second-year student and co-coordinator of the event, said the First Amendment Forum will include members of society who have been affected by hate speech as well as members of the media who have covered these events.
"In the morning we have the newsmakers, they are the ones who are the victims of hate speech and then we are going to have the journalists in the afternoon who are going to discuss when it is free speech and how they cover it in the media."
Heltemes said that she was concerned about a recent study that found that the city of St. Cloud, Minnesota's ninth most populated city, is second in the state for the number of hate crimes committed.
"We chose this topic in light of this fact and I think it is important for people to see who are actually the victims of hate speech; to see it through other people's perspectives," Heltemes said.
Heltemes believes it is important for students to attend the event because many students on campus have not had to personally deal with the effects of hate speech.
"For a lot of students on campus it doesn't apply to them or they don't see it so they don't realize it," Heltemes said. "If they attend, they will learn about what is really going on in the community and seeing the people who it affects. It is a reality."
Mark Mills, a broadcast journalism professor at SCSU, was a reporter for 13 years and said that many people do not realize how much hate speech exists in our society.
"Now with the Internet, anybody, anytime, can put up their dogma and their philosophy of hate," Mills said. "I think the thing that is going to surprise students the most is how much of it there is actually out there. It is pretty extensive."
Mills said that hate speech is a severe problem for everyone, but especially young people. He believes that parents should guard their children from exposure to hate speech because children are the most vulnerable to messages of intolerance.
"When they see hate speech, it probably carries more weight than it should," Mills said. "Unfortunately, you have to allow it. You either have freedom of speech or you don't. You can't pick and choose what speech you'll allow and what speech you won't allow because if you do, it will start you down a slippery slope."
For more information on the First Amendment Forum, contact the SCSU Department of Mass Communications at 308-3293.
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