Term 'Morons' Sparks Harvard Flap story.news.yahoo.com
[ a wire service story, in full, from the sometimes amusing "oddly enough" Yahoo news page, news.yahoo.com ]
Tue Nov 12, 9:58 AM ET
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - A cartoon in Harvard Business School's student newspaper criticizing the school's computer system triggered the resignation of a student editor and generated a free speech controversy.
The problems arose before corporate recruiting sessions, when computer mixups scrambled some of the students' interview schedules.
The student newspaper, Harbus, reacted by publishing a cartoon of a career services Web site overloaded with error messages, including one referring to "incompetent morons." In turn, the director of the MBA program reprimanded two student editors, and warned them to avoid "disrespectful" language.
Nick Will, the paper's editor in chief, resigned and cited "personal intimidation and threats" by Harvard officials, according to The Boston Globe. The exchange has prompted debates about free speech.
"The message the school sent to Nick Will was pretty threatening," Jennifer Taylor, a second-year student and member of a board reviewing the case. "This is denying the community a voice to express its frustrations."
MBA chairman Carl Kester, however, said there was no intent to censor the editors. The cartoon violated the campus "community standards" code, he said, because it insulted the school's career-services employees.
"If it weren't for those two words, nothing would have been said or done to the students," Kester told the Globe. "There was just a very palpable sense that this had damaged the feelings of people working very hard on behalf of students."
Kim B. Clark, dean of the Business School, wrote in a memo sent Friday to students that while the school is "committed to principles of free expression and inquiry ... each of us first and foremost is a member of the Harvard Business School community, and as such, we are expected to treat each other respectfully."
Harbus editors argued the cartoon faulted the school's computer system — not individuals.
[ on a more Darwinian note, from the same source: ]
Teen Burns Himself Copying 'Jackass' Stunt story.news.yahoo.com
Tue Nov 12, 8:56 AM ET
SEATTLE (Reuters) - A 15-year-old Washington state boy suffered serious burns when he set himself on fire trying to re-enact a stunt from MTV's controversial show "Jackass," police said on Monday.
The boy from the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, Washington, soaked his shirt in rubbing alcohol late on Friday and ignited it while his friends stood by with a video camera shooting footage they planned to sell, police and local media reported.
After suffering first-degree burns over his face and upper body, the teen-ager initially told police that someone had set his clothes on fire while he walked on a trail after attending a high school football game in Issaquah, Washington, police said.
But police later recovered a backpack containing an alcohol-soaked T-shirt, lighter fluid and a video camera.
"The stunt obviously went very wrong," Issaquah police said in a statement, adding that the boy could face obstruction of justice charges for lying about the incident, requiring extra police work. . . . |
