Crowd Control

[50's PONY]

How free should speech be at campus games?
By Erik Brady, USA TODAY
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — You can't shout "fire!" in a crowded theater. But can you shout a different F-word in a crowded arena?

Xavier University student Brian Shonebarger gets fired up before a big game against crosstown rival University of Cincinnati.
By Steven Herppich, Cincinnati Enquirer

This is an open question at the University of Maryland, where many students believe that they have a constitutional right to talk dirty. Hundreds shouted obscenities early and often during a men's basketball game last month against hated rival Duke. The chants aired live on national TV and have emerged as another pitched battle in the civil war over the coarsening of the culture.

Each time Duke guard J.J. Redick stepped to the foul line Jan. 21, many students chanted, "(Expletive) you, J.J.!" — an ugly intersection of free speech and free throws.

Maryland athletic officials say they are unable to eject students who do this because the university is a public institution that plays its basketball games in a public facility — and is thus bound by the First Amendment of the Constitution. But last week, after hearing widespread complaints, school officials asked the state attorney general for guidance.

Can public schools discipline their students for vituperative language? Or does civil liberty trump civility on campus these days?

Colleges across the country are struggling with similar issues. The NCAA provides member institutions with sample announcements to be read before games urging fans to be good sports and warning that they can be ejected. And though fans are sometimes tossed for throwing objects or for drunkenness, they are less often expelled for language.

"This issue is critical in the sense that crowd behavior puts a public face on the image of a university," says John Swofford, commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, which includes Maryland and Duke.

John Anderson, the Maryland assistant attorney general who is researching the matter, says school officials asked whether they could eject students from games for chanting obscenities or for wearing T-shirts imprinted with them. Anderson says he is looking at case law and preparing an answer but isn't sure how soon he'll have an answer.

Meantime, Maryland is trying moral suasion. President C.D. Mote Jr. wrote a letter to the school newspaper last week asking for better behavior. Maryland coach Gary Williams took a microphone and appealed to the crowd before Sunday's home loss to North Carolina State, a game in which fans mostly behaved. History suggests asking nicely is not a long-term fix. Maryland spent $30,000 last school year on a campuswide sportsmanship campaign.

Foul-mouthed sports fans are nothing new. Williams says his Terrapins are the targets of profane verbal abuse almost everywhere they go. The notion that everyone does it is more indictment than defense, but Williams is right that the problem is national in scope:

•University of North Dakota President Charles Kupchella met with the student senate this week to ask for its help in stopping hockey fans from shouting obscenities.

•University of Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins said this week that his team heard more profanity in its game at crosstown rival Xavier two seasons ago than at any time in his career, and if it had not been for the longtime nature of the rivalry, he might not have played there again. When the schools met Tuesday at Xavier, students traded blue language for faces painted blue and some held gently mocking signs. One said: "Welcome Fellow Scholars."

•Last summer, the Big Ten adopted a rule that bans student sections from singling out individual players for verbal abuse. Iowa coach Steve Alford complained last week that forward Pierre Pierce has been a target in several games this season.

Free speech 'paradoxical'

Kermit Hall, president of Utah State University, is an expert on First Amendment issues. He says free speech at public universities is "at once the most obvious and the most paradoxical of constitutional principles" — obvious because the role of open expression is essential to academic freedom and paradoxical because it must be balanced against imperatives for civility and respect.

But Hall says the Maryland case is not a close call. He believes public universities have not only a right to eject students who chant obscenities but a responsibility to do so in consideration of others' rights to watch a game in a safe setting. Hall says students should be warned first, then have their tickets pulled.

"I think that's legally justifiable and sustainable," Hall says. "There are two interesting and controlling factors. First, the process of admission to an athletic event is a license, which can be revoked. Second, there is an exemption to the First Amendment for 'fighting words' used to try to incite or intimidate." Hall says racial slurs are hate speech but that this type of profanity at ballgames is something else: "uncivilized utterances accelerated by sporting enthusiasm."

Anderson, who is in charge of the Maryland attorney general's educational affairs division, says the university has used Cohen v. California for guidance. The 1971 case involved a man arrested for wearing a jacket in a courthouse hallway that said "(Expletive) the draft." The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was protected speech.

"Maybe that case answers it," Anderson says. "But there are distinctions between that case" and what happens in a sports arena, where speech is rarely political. "That's why I would be loath to say that Cohen is a stopper."

Anderson says he will research other cases and will consider points of view similar to Hall's. But he adds that the answer might be different for colleges in different sections of the country. "College Park exists in a highly litigious culture right outside of Washington, D.C.," he says, and may be more susceptible to suits over free speech than colleges elsewhere.

What of in loco parentis, a concept that says colleges should act in place of students' parents? Wouldn't Mom wash out her sociology major's mouth with soap for talk like that? "Colleges have shed that role over the last 20 years," Anderson says. "Students are more customers now than they are in custodial care. And they are more conscious of their rights."

Students support right to curse

Many Maryland students feel they have a right to drop F-bombs in public if the spirit moves them.

Sunday, when the Terrapins played their next home game after the Duke contest, USA TODAY canvassed a dozen students in front-row seats at the Comcast Center. Most said, yes, they participated in the obscene chants and, yes, they believe they have a free-speech right to do so. But, no, they don't plan to do it now that Williams has asked them not to — at least until Duke comes again next season, when they just might.

"If you can't curse at a basketball game, what's next, a curfew?" asked freshman pre-med major Russell Rosenblatt, wearing a red fright wig. "We're paying them for an education, not to tell us what we can say at a basketball game."

Freshman animal science major Lauren Schick said students have a right to chant obscenities, "but we're not going to do it anymore. We're really not like that."

Sophomore marketing major Matt Ursino is. He wore a T-shirt to Sunday's game with two four-letter words, one of which was Duke. He said he would go along with Williams' plea not to chant obscenities anymore, but he planned to keep wearing his shirt.

What about the rights of fans who bring their children to games? "You can't shield children from everything," Ursino says. Fans with kids "have the right to say anything they want, and we have the same right to say anything we want. The games are for the students more than anyone else

[OldPony]

I remember a friend being ejected from an SMU game about 35 years ago because the campus police THOUGHT he said the Mother of All curse words. I really don't see the problem in enforcing a language standard at a game. Simply print on the tickets that obscenities are not allowed and that their use will cause forfieture of the ticket. The ticket is a license and can be revoked for any number of reasons. We coud banish those who wore black shirts if we wanted and stated clearly that they were prohibited on the ticket.
I understand the litigous nature of our society and that defining obscenities might cause a problem but the right to swing your fist ends at the other guys nose and there are societal norms.

[Dement-ed]

I think there's a time and place for everything, but if you're swearing at Duke, then you get a free pass to say whatever you want. The Dookies deserve to be cussed at.

Personally, I always liked that lawyer geek who used to go to NBA games in Washington. He sat behind the opponents' bench and got on the opponents from start to finish. But he was never profane, and never based his comments on race or anything personal that might have been reported in the media. If a player had been arrested or accused of something, that was off-limits. But should that same player show up with a goofy hairstyle, this dude teed off.

When I heard the story about him, NBC did a story on him, because Chicago was playing Phoenix in the Finals, and Charles Barkley liked the guy so much he flew him in to the games. That's impressive, footing the bill for a fan of another team.

That kind of heckling is absolutely required.

[OldPony]

I thouroughly enjoy 'Intelligent" heckling. My favorite occured many years ago when Steve Stepanovich was playing for Missouri. He had reported a break-in at his apt and when he fought with the intruder, his gun went off and he was shot in the leg. As it turned out a few months later, he had actually been cleaning his gun and it went off accidentally. When they played KU when he first returned following his recovery, as he was being introduced, the entire KU student section jumped up and started firing cap pistols at him. The poor kid was so unnerved that he had a terrible first half as I remember. A couple of years ago a OKIE ST guy came out on KU's court with his pants on backwards. Everytime he got the ball from then on the chant was "Pants on Backwards".
Duke has always been funny. I hear they have something special planned for UNC this year.
I enjoy our band's Right ,Left, Sit Down for players who foul out. Yelling at funny hairdos, ball hogs (remember that Jerryl?), mimicking coaches etc is great. No one does it better than college kids when they set their minds to doing it right. As a student, we thought we had done it right when the game announcers laughed out loud and told the audience what was funny.

[Hal]

When I was in school, we used to sit behind the other team's bench and ride everyone -- coaches, bench players, starters who were resting -- and of course timeout huddles were prime opportunities. One of my favorites was when Texas Tech came into town, and my friends were picking on then-coach James Dickey about everything: his name (without being too tasteless), his disaster of a haircut, the tie he wore that day, etc. At one point, he was standing with his left hand in his pocket and pointing with his right hand (to the point of a non-foul or the ball going out of bounds or something). During one of those moments when Moody went quiet, you could hear every word .... and one of my buddies yelled "Hey Dickey, what are you doing with your left hand?" Everyone in the place heard it. Dickey heard it, looked down and realized where his left hand was, and realized how it looked to the crowd. He cracked up, and the fans went crazy. Dickey actually walked over to us (I thought he was going to hit someone, or try to have us thrown out) and shook my friend's hand. He was a really good sport about it. (Of course, that might not have been the case if Tech had been losing.)

<small>[ 02-06-2004, 02:55 PM: Message edited by: Hal ]</small>

[OldPony]

That's funny. I bet Bobby would take a joke the same way. The KU fans probably will have something for Bobby today. I hope so anyway.

[PonySnob]

The poor performance of our football and basketball teams appears to be a very good way to control the crowd.

[OldPony]

TROLL