CSULB Debates Adopting Speech Code : Bias: Campus incidents spur proposed ban on statements that insult people based on race, religion or sexual orientation.

Two students stepped out of a history class at Cal State Long Beach a few months ago and got into a fistfight in a dispute over African-American history. During the confrontation, one of the combatants hurled a series of racial epithets at the other, who is black.

Last month, an educational psychology professor was accused of belittling African-American culture in class and using a racial slur in a conversation with a black student. The Black Student Union demanded his ouster.

Early this month, a physical education instructor and weight coach made a racially derogatory remark to a black athlete. The instructor later apologized.

Officials at Cal State Long Beach say they have received an increasing number of such reports in the past two years, mirroring a trend at universities throughout the country. As a result, officials on the Long Beach campus have proposed a speech code that would ban statements that insult people based on race, religion or sexual orientation. Violators could face penalties ranging from reprimands to termination or expulsion.

“There’s been a kind of polarization,” said Noel Grogan, director of student administrative services, the office that proposed and wrote the code. “We’ve seen an increase both in tension and in the use of language that borders on being assaultive.”

Administrators attribute the increase to such factors as the increasing ethnic diversity on campus, and a national political climate in which growing numbers of ethnic and racial groups see themselves increasingly as competitors.

The speech code proposal--Statement of Discriminatory Harassment--will be considered next month by the university’s Academic Senate, an organization of faculty members. But it already has generated debate on campus.

“I’m fairly comfortable with it,” said June Cooper, vice president for student services.

“What we’re saying is that personal epithets delivered directly to a person intended to harm or injure . . . are the equivalent of yelling fire (in a crowded theater).”

Robert E. Hayes, a political science professor who teaches courses in constitutional law and has been quoted in the campus newspaper as opposing the measure, countered: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox. It’s alarming: You would have the speech police punishing people for the expression of their ideas.”

Christina Speaker, president of the Associated Students, said that she endorses the proposed speech code. “We just won’t tolerate (such racial slurs),” Speaker said. “Everybody is up in arms. Personally, I am outraged and would like to see something done.”

If the Academic Senate approves the proposal, it will be forwarded to President Curtis L. McCray for a final decision.

McCray said he’s still undecided on the matter.

“To restrict speech in any way seems damaging to the search for truth,” he said, yet people of varying backgrounds need to be able to communicate. “What I’m hopeful of,” he said, “is a policy that doesn’t direct human speech but speaks to the need for common understanding.”

The idea of a speech code to restrict statements considered inflammatory is not new. More than 200 colleges and universities have either revised existing student codes of conduct or enacted new speech codes in recent years. The University of Michigan, in a policy since overturned by a federal court, warned that it would discipline students for comments--including jokes--that “stigmatize or victimize” others based on race, sex, sexual orientation, ancestry or religion.

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

At the University of California, students are prohibited from uttering “personally abusive epithets” that are “inherently likely to provoke a violent reaction.”

The speech code now being discussed at CSULB would prohibit expressions of “invidious discrimination or discriminatory harassment” that threatened “human dignity” and peace on the campus. More specifically, the code would ban “fighting words” by either professors or students that “insult persons on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, sexual orientation, or national or ethnic origin.”

While the document contains no list of the specific words that it would ban, it defines them generally as “those personally abusive epithets which, when directly addressed to any ordinary person, are . . . inherently likely to provide an immediate violent reaction.”

Cooper said she didn’t include a specific list of words in the proposed code to avoid omitting something. “I didn’t want to do a laundry list and leave out a couple I hadn’t heard of,” she said.

But opponents say the vague wording will make the measure unworkable. “It seems to me that if you’re going to punish people, it ought to be indicated which words are going to (result in punishment) and in what context,” said Ben Cunningham, a journalism professor and publisher of the campus newspaper. “Are we going to go back to the days of Joe McCarthy (and) have students sitting in classrooms with tape recorders in hollowed-out books listening to the lectures presented by professors? I think the whole thing is ludicrous.”

Cooper argues that the measure is meant as a general statement against verbal harassment rather than an infringement of free speech. “We’re not curbing unpopular speech,” she said. “We’re talking about nose-to-nose personal epithets and slurs that certainly will disrupt the peace and tranquility of a campus.”

A U.S. district judge recently struck down as unconstitutional the University of Michigan code after several students contended in a lawsuit that it violated their First Amendment rights. But supporters of such measures point out that a 1942 Supreme Court decision held that the Constitution does not protect “fighting words” likely to evoke violent reactions.

The incidents involving the CSULB professor and the physical education instructor were raised last week during a campus speech by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. “If a professor stinks,” Jackson said amid the enthusiastic cheers of an audience of several hundred, “then just disinfect him and move on. We don’t need to drive him away, we need to teach him. He needs to be re-educated. He needs to go back to school.”

Both the instructor, Mark Reiff, and the professor, George R. Schmidt, have been put on paid leaves of absence pending the outcomes of separate investigations, administrators said. Neither returned phone calls last week.

Community correspondent Leta Lynde contributed to this story.