Mirror - Vol. 17, No. 08 - November 12, 1992

              The
FairfieldMRRORV Volume 17, No. 8 Thursday, November 12, 1992 All the News That's Print to Fit
Student Art Censored
Debra De Shong
News Editor
The next time senior Mike
Anderer is bored at three o'clock
in the morning, he'll think twice
about how he passes the time. Last
time at that hour, he and his
housemates decided to make a po-litical
statement and artistic draw-ing
that was deemed obscene and
confiscated by the office of Resi-dence
Life.
Anderer made a black and
white banner that read "Read my
lips, no Bush in '92," and had three
vertical lines and a diagonal line
that security called, "graphic de-piction
of female genitalia." The
poster was hung in the window of
townhouse 82 in the early hours of
October 13 and by 9 am, security
reported the banner to Residence
Life who confiscated it and subse-quently
charged Anderer with vio-lating
the obscenity code in the
student handbook.
Anderer said, "people
who think that the banner is what
they said it was, obviously never
saw female genitalia." He feels
that people thought it was much
worse than it is. The idea for the
artistic representation came from a
T-shirt design advertised in the
Village Voice. "No way was it my
creation," said Anderer.
At first, Anderer said he
was under the impression that it
was a violation of his rights. How-ever,
he has learned that the first
and fourteenth amendment defend
citizens against the government but
not private institutions. In other
words, private institutions like uni-versities
are allowed to set their
own system of standards.
The faculty advisor in
this case, Dr. Don Greenberg of
the politics department feels that
this is an important first amend-ment
and freedom of expression
issue. However, in this case,
Fairfield failed to set a specific set
of standards and Anderer was found
innocent.
When Anderer was
brought before the studentjudicial
board, he said "some people had it
set in their minds that it was ob-scene,"
but they failed to bring
down a guilty verdict because the
obscenity code in the student hand-book
was too vague.
The handbook states, "ob-scene
expression, either oral or
visual, on University property or
University sponsored events is pro-hibited."
In relation to this defini-tion,
the banner could not bejudged
obscene. Anderer says he does not
consider the poster to be graphic or
harmful, but is "willing to say it is
tasteless."
After the verdict of not
guilty was handed down from stu-dent
court, Fr. Lawrence O'Neil,
the Dean of Students, forbade
Anderer to rehang the poster de-spite
the fact that the court ruled
that it was not obscene. He claimed
that it is not appropriate in this
Jesuit community. He also threat-ened
that if it was rehung, Anderer
would be charged with another,
more concrete offense. Anderer
chose not to hang up the poster
again.
"It made me mad. I can
understand the university's view,
but I think it was an abusive form
of control," said Anderer. "I think
student court should have more of
a say in disciplinary matters, but I
have no idea why people found it
so offensive."
One student said, "I think
it's offensive," but the majority of
the reactions was like that of an-other
student: "This is so dumb, I
don't even get it."
Junior Dana Felmlee said,
"It's okay to put it on a t-shirt and in
political cartoons, but you can't put
it in your bedroom. What does the
university think it's protecting us
from?"
As a result of this inci-dent,
the university plans to re-write
the code on obscenity in the
handbook to make the definition
more specific for future reference.
Stag-Her Controversy
Refuses to Die Carrie Brown
Staff Writer
A battle is still going on
around campus in regard to the
renaming of the Stag-Her Inn.
Lines have been drawn and the
battle between the politically cor-rect
and traditionalists rages on.
The FUSA Senate has initiated a
petition to keep the name of the
Stag-Her Inn.
In efforts to curtail the
agreement, a calling for sugges-tions
of new names, by the Uni-versity
Council, is still going on.
On October 27, the FUSA
Senate discussed the situation and
several options were announced
for bringing about a solution to the
controversy. They, in turn, felt tha
tthe majority of the people didn't
take offense to the original name.
Thus, an Ad-Hoc Com-mittee
was established by the Sen-ate.
This committee requested stu-dent
signatures to a petition that
asked that the name of the pub
remain the Stag Her Inn.
The petition was located
in the campus center lobby for two
days but only 170 names were
collected.
The FUSA Senate meet-ing
on November 3 discussed, in
The center of controversy, the Stag Her Inn.
greater detail, the specific argu-ments
for the change of the name of
the pub, and those for the name to
remain as is.
Some felt that the name
ssignified the historical acceptance
of women in to the university. The
pub was originally called the Stag,
but when women were admitted in
1971, the Her was tagged on.
Still others pointed out that
changing the name and the sign
won't stop people from calling it
the Stag Her Inn.
Senators have decided to
make copies of the petition so that
it enables them to collect signa-tures
from students in their resi-dence
halls as well as from faculty
members.
A Senatorial board mem-ber
pointed out the necessity of
getting as many women as pos-sible
to sign the petition because
that is one of the groups the
Univeristy Council is claiming that
the name offends.
The Senate is looking for as
many signatures as possible to aid
them in the debate to keep the name
of the pub the Stag-Her Inn.
This will also be the topic
of the University Council meeting
and the FUSA Senate meeting on
Tuesday, November 10. Look in
The Mirror for future updates.
Students
TurnedAway
at the Polls
Ann Heckenberger
Contributing Writer
and
Debra De Shong
News Editor
Many Fairfield students
trudged across campus, in the
rain, to exercise their constitu-tional
right to vote last Tuesday.
It marked the first year the stu-dents,
as a group, made an effort
to register in the town ofFairfield.
Upon arrival in the Oak Room
however, numerous students
were informed by poll volunteers
that, they were not registered to
vote. There were three voter reg-istration
drives in the past year
and there seemed to be some prob-lem
or confusion surrounding ev-,
ery one.
The first one was held last
April as a class project for pro-fessor
Sally Ann Ryan. Four stu-dents
organized this project and
registered 80 students, however,
those registration'cards were de-clared
invalid by the Registrar of
Voters in the town of Fairfield
due to a lack of proper notariza-tion.
The Fairfield Registrar sent
the invalid cards back to the no-tary
(person who legally vali-dated
the cards), and that person
sent the cards back to one of the
students in charge of the project.
That student did nothing with the
cards until three days before the
election which was too late to
remedy the problem.
During the June Orienta-tion
program, FUSA registered
46 students but these cards were
again found invalid by the town
of Fairfield. FUSA immediately
took three steps; they contacted
all Freshman Facilitators and
asked them to tell their groups to
reregister, they contacted all Resi-dent
Advisors and asked them to
inform their floors to reregister,
and FUSA President Steve Shan-non
spoke at the President's Ad-dress
to the freshman class in
September and reiterated the need
to reregister. For the remainder
of the student body who had reg-istered
at the end of the previous
school year, green pamphlets,
explaining the registration pro-cess
and the problems that had
been encountered, were placed
in mailboxes. A statement was
written in bold print which read,
"NOTE: If you filled out a reg-istration
card last semester, you
will have to reregister!"
This fall FUSA again reg-
(continued to p.3)
r
Grad Fair
orovides info
to puzzled
students
page 2
Shuttle
driver makes
public trans-portation
a
joy ride
page 7
The latest
victims of
beach
robbery
emerge
page 14
Movie
Preview
Forecasts Hot
Winter
page 17
Men' s Soccer
falls
in finals
page 20
Before you register for classes, be sure to check out the FUSA Faculty Evaluations, pp. 4-6