Dartblog

Charles Mitchell at The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization advocating free speech at colleges, kindly links to Dartblog as he discusses the issue of the proposed constitution.

Responding to the draft’s demand that petition candidates announce themselves before the establishment candidates, Charles writes:

The whole point of candidacies like those of the “free speech trustees” is to defeat unacceptable creatures of the establishment—the kind of folks who will allow immoral speech codes to stand. (If you don’t believe such persons exist, witness the fact that red-light speech codes exist at hundreds of colleges and universities. While they are rampant, trustees willing to fight them are not.) Dartmouth’s AGTF must know that it is unreasonable to expect outside candidates to somehow craft a grassroots movement that will yield the necessary number of petitioners without knowing whether the opposing candidate is any good.

Petitioning should be rare. It is a safety valve, not a political party. Keep it that way.

ALSO: The Boston event was this evening. David Gale was able to liveblog some of it, although putting aside for a moment the specifics, it must be worthy of note that virtually every audience speaker and questioner, with the exception, if I recall correctly, of only two people, was directed against the proposed constitution. And the two approving questions were either asked by someone on the current Council or Executive Committee.

UPDATE: David e-mails:

Just saw your updated post mentioning my “liveblogging”, and I’d say the score was more like 3 in favor (a current council member, a current executive committee member, and Gary Love); 2 neutral questions, and 7 against.