COLUMN ONE : Forbidden Words on Campus : For decades, denial of free speech has provoked college protests. But now schools are split as student codes limit expression--at least when racial or sexual issues are involved.

Campus humor can be a risky business these days.

In December, the editors of the Connector, the student newspaper at the state-run University of Lowell in Massachusetts, published a cartoon mocking what they considered overzealous protesters--both those who favor animal rights and those who favor the death penalty.

One side showed a drawing of an animal rights activist, with the caption: “Some of my best friends are laboratory rats.” On the other was a big-bellied death-penalty advocate. “None of his best friends are young, black males,” said the legend underneath.

But black students didn’t find the cartoon funny and neither did university officials. They promptly charged the student editors with violating the student code by creating a “hostile environment” on campus and other “civil rights” abuses. Eventually, the editors found themselves facing university sanctions that included six months’ probation and 30 hours of community service and removal from the newspaper’s staff.

For decades, denial of free speech has provoked protests on campus. But these days the complaints are on the other side. Today, many students and liberal academics are urging limits on free speech--at least when the topic involves racial or sexual issues.

From Massachusetts to California, more than 200 colleges and universities--many of them the nation’s most elite--have either revised their student codes of conduct or enacted new “speech codes” designed to prevent utterances on race, sex, religion, national origin or sexual preference that might offend some students.

“This is the new liberal cause celebre ,” says UC Berkeley law professor Robert C. Post. “It has forced a wedge between those devoted to civil rights and civil liberties.”

University of Colorado Law School Dean Gene Nichol calls himself an “old-fashioned, free speech liberal” but now finds his views unpopular. “It is no longer ‘politically correct’ to take the free speech position,” Nichol laments.

Examples abound:

--The University of Michigan has warned that it will discipline students for comments that “stigmatize or victimize” others based on race, sex, sexual orientation, ancestry or religion--including joke-telling or making fun of someone.

--The University of Wisconsin has revised its code of conduct to prohibit “discriminatory harassment”--including comments that “demean” another student or “create an intimidating, hostile or demeaning environment.”

--The University of California’s code prohibits students from making “personally abusive epithets” that are “inherently likely to provoke a violent reaction.” These include “derogatory references” to race, ethnic origin, religion, sex or other characteristics.

Faculties and student bodies alike have split over whether the new limits are needed or wise.

Supporters of the new policies, including many law professors, say that the new codes are needed to prevent the spread of “hate-speech” on campus--a fear prompted by growing reports of racist incidents including cross-burnings, anonymous hate-mailings and fraternity parties in which white students carried out mock “slave auctions,” which onlookers found offensive.

University of Houston law professor Michael Olivas concedes that colleges ideally should be “enclaves for discussion and free speech” but argues that racial slurs can prevent young black or Latino students from pursuing their studies.

“These students are extremely vulnerable,” Olivas contends. “These comments humiliate and threaten. They don’t have anything to do with free speech. The traditional liberals refuse to see that racism warrants special treatment.”

Law professors Mari Matsuda of UCLA and Richard Delgado of the University of Colorado contend that racist comments are a form of assault that can and should be banned on campus.

But others argue that free speech must be protected, even when it is offensive to some listeners. “I think it is a dangerous precedent to start banning particular words,” says University of Virginia Prof. Robert O’Neil.

To some, the growth of such “speech codes” is part of a historic shift in political attitudes.

In the 1960s, the protesters most often were leftists, who campaigned for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. Conservatives talked of “law and order” and of stifling anti-war dissent.

But today, the most vehement street protesters oppose legalized abortion. And it is conservatives who have most visibly taken up the free speech banner.

Whether it is tobacco ads, children’s television, anti-abortion demonstrations or racist utterances, “it is the people on the left who want to regulate speech,” says University of Chicago law professor Michael McConnell.

What troubles some critics of the new codes is the lengths to which they go in attempting to define improper behavior. Though spurred by incidents of blatant racism, the codes have been used to discipline those whose sins are not as clear-cut.

When the University of Michigan first enacted its speech code, in 1988, it also published a brochure citing examples of “violations.”

Among the activities that were included: making jokes about homosexual men and lesbians, displaying a Confederate flag in a dormitory, laughing at a joke about someone who stutters, making derogatory comments about a person’s physical appearance, sponsoring entertainment in which a comedian makes jokes about Latinos and uttering classroom remarks such as “Women just aren’t as good as men in this field.”

Initially, Michigan enforced its new code actively. In 1989, a student hearing board found a graduate student guilty of violations for having publicly characterized homosexuality as a “disease”--though it later refused to impose sanctions, which could have ranged from a formal apology to expulsion from the university.

Later, a black dental student was charged with violating the code for having told a minority instructor that she had heard “minority students had a difficult time in the course” and that they “were not treated fairly.”

The instructor filed a complaint of her own because, she said, the student’s comment could threaten her chances for tenure. The student eventually was required to write an apology.

In another case, a business student who read “an allegedly homophobic limerick” aloud was required to attend “an educational ‘gay rap’ session” and write a letter of apology to the campus newspaper.

Still another student was charged with anti-Semitism for having voiced the opinion in class that “Jews used the Holocaust” to justify repression of Palestinians. The case eventually was dismissed, but it provoked protest from free speech advocates.

When several students filed suit, challenging the university’s speech code on grounds that it violated the 1st Amendment, U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn struck down the Michigan code as unconstitutional.

As a legal matter, the issue mainly affects state-run universities. Although private schools, such as Stanford University, sometimes impose speech codes as well, they aren’t subject to challenge under the 1st Amendment, which only bars the government from restricting free speech and so far has not been applied to private universities.

Dartmouth University recently was the subject of nationwide headlines when it suspended several students who edited an off-campus weekly newspaper that ran articles criticizing a black music professor. Over the years, the publication, the Dartmouth Review, has been castigated for its attacks on women, homosexuals, blacks and Indians.

The U.S. Supreme Court has not spoken on whether racist or sexist comments are protected as free speech. In a 1942 case, Chaplinsky vs. New Hampshire, the high court upheld the conviction of a man who shouted into the face of a policeman that he was a “goddamned racketeer and a damned fascist.” Such “fighting words” are not protected by the 1st Amendment, the court declared. More recently, the court has whittled down the “fighting words” exception, but not overruled it.

Two years ago, as many state universities were declaring “demeaning” comments illegal, the Supreme Court declared that burning an American flag, while offensive, was nonetheless legal. “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the 1st Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable,” Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote for the court in Texas vs. Johnson.

Judge Cohn cited the flag-burning ruling in striking down the Michigan code.

Since then, universities such as Wisconsin, Stanford and the University of California have revised their codes to punish only the use of so-called “fighting words.” They also have decided not to provide examples of words or comments that would violate the codes.

When three Wisconsin students complained that they had been called “rednecks,” university officials informed them that the code did not cover that word.

“Redneck is not a demeaning term. It does not have a common meaning,” said Roger Howard, an assistant dean of students in Madison.

University of California officials in Berkeley and Los Angeles refused to say definitively whether calling a fellow student names ranging from “nigger” to “nerd” would violate the campus codes.

“We don’t have a list of good and bad words,” says Raymond Goldstone, dean of students at UCLA. “It is a case-by-case situation.” Although the University of California’s new code took effect in September, 1989, no student has been disciplined because of it.

For traditional liberals, the issue has become a thorny one.

After much hesitation, the American Civil Liberties Union has decided to oppose the new campus codes. Torn between potentially conflicting desires to combat racism and to protect free speech, the ACLU agonized for several years over the issue. But last autumn, the organization issued a new policy statement condemning the new speech codes, while adding that universities are certainly free to punish students for “acts of harassment, intimidation or invasion of privacy.”

Nadine Strossen, a New York Law School professor who is the ACLU’s new president, said that the campus speech issue has proved as divisive as championing the rights of neo-Nazis in 1977 to march through a Jewish community of Skokie, Ill.

But Strossen still disparages the new speech codes. “They are undermining free speech, and they are doing nothing to stop racism and bigotry,” she says. “For university administrators, they are a cheap solution to a complex problem.”

Meanwhile, back in Lowell, the controversy continues. Last week, after consulting its attorneys, the university said through a spokesman that it was dropping the charges against the student editors--though it had not yet informed them about the decision.

“We sought a second legal opinion and on the basis of that we’re discontinuing any kind of action,” says Thomas C. Taylor, assistant dean of students, who had signed the initial letters outlining the prescribed punishment.

“We were trying to weigh a lot of issues,” he explains. “It was an environmental issue really. We didn’t want to have a hostile environment for black students and an atmosphere that would degrade women. That was our intent.”

Ironically, some onlookers believe the black students may have misinterpreted the intent of the cartoon. Although the drawing seems on its face to support claims that they were disproportionately victimized by the death penalty, the students accused the paper of “racial insensitivity” for having “very boldly compared young, black males to laboratory animals, in particular, rats.”

But Patty Janice, editor of the student newspaper in Lowell, says that she believes her fellow students were made scapegoats for the university’s seeming difficulty in attracting black students.

“They have had problems in the past with recruiting black students--the administration has been under the gun,” she says. “Attacking us was the easiest way to make it look like they were doing something on that issue.”