<p>As a current Tufts student, I must first say I love my school. It’s the best experience of my life. However, it should be known that Tufts is pretty homogeneous when it comes to political beliefs. When it comes to protecting individual freedoms and rights, Tufts is also not very strong. Take a look at what FIRE has to say about them: </p>
<p>I can’t say that I agree with either FIRE or your concerns. This is not a First Amendment issue, because we are talking about regulating speech at a private university. This is about the school’s understandable desire to maintain an environment in which certain ethnic minorities are not made to feel that they are the object of scorn or enmity merely because of their ethnicity. I think that this is an entirely appropriate objective for such a university.</p>
<p>Freedom of speech is a great idea but if people are running around saying damn black people, or death to gays, someones going to call them out.</p>
<p>FIRE was understandably angry to see something written by Tufts students and I totally agree.</p>
<p>A group wrote a “Christmas Song” called Come All Ye Black Folk and it basically said that Tufts needs to fill a quota of black, ghetto people, even if they’re loud and stupid. That’s seriously offensive. I would be ashamed if one of my classmates distributed garbage like that.</p>
<p>The issue was not that the Primary Source had criticized Affirmative Action, it was that they had attacked a specific group of students on campus because of their race.</p>
<p>I grabbed the following from similar discussion elsewhere; these are the thoughts of Matt Skibinski, the Editor-in-Chief of the Tufts Daily from last semester. There’s been a lot of movement in this story; thefire.org, unfortunately, has failed to stay current on the events they describe which has led to an understandable level of confusion and misinformation. Hopefully, this will help add perspective.</p>
<p>Considering that nothing has been done to censor, impinge, or restrict the voice of the publication in question, much of thefire.org’s positions seem hyperbolic to me. What I invite each of you to do, especially if you have freedom of expression concerns, is to use thefire.org’s own profile of Tufts. This profile systematically lists the policies Tufts has concerning speech. Read the policies, and see if you have problems. [FIRE</a> - Tufts University](<a href=“http://www.thefire.org/index.php/codes/762]FIRE”>http://www.thefire.org/index.php/codes/762).</p>
<p>hebrewhammer, I am aware of the meaning of the word “homogeneous.” What I was confused about is banaphone’s claim that the political beliefs of the campus are homogenous, followed by a claim of tufts students’ disregard for individual liberties, an action that would most likely be true of the modern political right (PATRIOT act, etc.). Not trying to start a political battle here, but the insinuation was curious. Perhaps I was distracted on my visit and tufts is more conservative than I imagined? Or maybe I’m making false inferences. </p>
<p>Aside from that, this is an interesting topic. Keep us posted on any updates, Dan.</p>