Music12 mins ago
Free Speech?
22 Answers
Angelos Sofocleous, a Durham University student, whose tweet “women don’t have penises” provoked a transphobic row, has been banned by the student union from taking part in a debate about free speech.
https:/ /www.bb c.co.uk /news/u k-engla nd-bris tol-471 99156
Ironic that the subject under debate is free speech, so should free speech mean free speech – or should it be curtailed and the speaker rejected simply because his opinion, albeit clearly accurate, doesn't meet with the approval of other people?
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Ironic that the subject under debate is free speech, so should free speech mean free speech – or should it be curtailed and the speaker rejected simply because his opinion, albeit clearly accurate, doesn't meet with the approval of other people?
Answers
Best Answer
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.It is important. Many of the people at this university (and most importantly on the student union) will be making their way into the civil service and onto local councils. Even if that wasn't the case, though, it's important because it comes back to the old issue about how student unions treat the people they are supposed to represent. Currently students in the UK are getting a pretty raw deal in various ways and they would benefit enormously from having conscientious and intelligent union reps to lobby on their behalf and represent their interests. That is what unions are for. Instead, the tiny cross-section of people who get on to these unions (invariably on remarkably shoddy electoral processes which would not be tolerated on any other kind of union) do something quite different. They waste their time picking fights with people who have the 'wrong' opinions and exploit sensible security rules to have them excluded from campus debate, they use their positions on student councils to grandstand and tote up CV points for their own political careers, and in general they make themselves a nuisance to the people they are supposed to be representing, who understandably respond by getting on with their lives and avoiding the Union at all costs. This is not how the majority of students who go to university think and it's a real shame that their representatives behave in this way.
Surely students should be debating all topics, no matter how distasteful? How else will they learn how listne and then to counter argue a point?
I see what you are saying ZM but this is just really a local debate, the outcome, whatever it would be, would not be binding or broadcast (apart from maybe Social media).
Students need to understand people have different opinions and those with different opinions need to understand where the line is if it is a contentious subject.
I see what you are saying ZM but this is just really a local debate, the outcome, whatever it would be, would not be binding or broadcast (apart from maybe Social media).
Students need to understand people have different opinions and those with different opinions need to understand where the line is if it is a contentious subject.
‘this is just really a local debate, the outcome, whatever it would be, would not be binding or broadcast’
But it has been broadcast!
That aside, I think your points actually back mine up. The opinions of students aren’t really any basis for pinning the concept of free speech on.
‘One week he’s in porker dots, the next week he’s in stripes’
But it has been broadcast!
That aside, I think your points actually back mine up. The opinions of students aren’t really any basis for pinning the concept of free speech on.
‘One week he’s in porker dots, the next week he’s in stripes’