Forgetting Neverland

Sometimes I wish I lived in Neverland.

I love Bloomington, but Neverland is not of this world, and that’s precisely why I sometimes wish I lived there. In Neverland, the laws of nature don’t apply. It’s a world where one can fly by simply thinking happy thoughts and growing old is an option, not a biological inevitability.

In this world, the process of growing up confuses me. I often feel like Tinkerbell flying through that unlatched, second-story London window, expecting to find Peter Pan but instead finding an aged and confused Peter Banning — a phantom of the confident, idealistic Peter Pan he was years ago.

I feel this way because one of our nation’s greatest generations of freedom fighters has lost its way. Once passionate and idealistic young people, they have become those very adults they spent their entire youth fighting against.

I’m talking about the generation that spawned the free speech movement. Yes, them. They are your professors, your elected officials and your parents. They are the reason the Indiana Daily Student doesn’t have to worry about censorship from IU administrators and the reason, in part, that we didn’t spend another decade in Vietnam.

For all the good they did, they really screwed things up as they got older. They are now the generation responsible for campus speech codes, which are unconstitutional rules regulating what students can and can’t say on campus.

And they are responsible for free speech zones, those small areas of campus where we are “free” to exercise our First Amendment rights. They are the generation that turned the California campus that was once their Neverland in the free speech movement into a bastion for censorship, a place where speech is only free if it agrees with the opinion of Captain Hook.

Last week, the University of California, Berkeley College Republicans had what they called an “increase diversity bake sale.” The purpose of the bake sale was to protest S.B. 185, an affirmative action-like piece of legislation making its way through the California legislature.

Those who disagree with affirmative action policies have done this type of protest for years. It’s a way to demonstrate the very nature of affirmative action. They charge students of different races different prices for baked goods, just as admissions officers at some schools use different standards when reviewing applications from students of different races.

Feminists have done this type of event to protest the pay gap between men and women. While this sort of event has been done hundreds of times at universities all across the country without a problem, the event at Berkeley last week drew international attention.

This was in part because the Berkeley community was so outraged at the idea. The university chancellor sent a letter to the entire student body condemning it; the student government issued a resolution in direct response to it; the president of the student government suggested that punitive measures were “definitely a possibility.”

To top off the irony, in a widely circulated picture, a student leader can be seen denouncing the event with a picture memorializing the free speech movement directly behind him. There was even discussion about defunding the group.

This all begs the question: What happened to Berkeley? What happened to the home of the free speech movement? The affirmative action bake sale is free speech at its purest. Not only is it political speech, but it is also speech in response to a timely and important issue.

What struck me most in the whole debacle, however, was not the response of the students and the chancellor, but the stunning silence of the Berkeley faculty.

Where were they to remind the Berkeley community of its rich heritage as champions for civil liberties? Where were they to remind students that it is through vigorous debate, not censorship, that our positions are strengthened and the truth is revealed?

They were in their offices. They were in their homes. They were everywhere but where they were supposed to be. They, the ones who were once fearless in defense of their rights, were silent. And that’s because they grew up.

Like Peter Banning, the once-indomitable leader of the Lost Boys in the movie “Hook,” their age destroyed their once-radiant spirit.

All I hope is that they find Tinkerbell to remind them what it’s like to stand for something.

­— nperrino@indiana.edu