The Place for Ideas

According to The Times (“Valley College News Column Ignites Protests and Threats,” Valley Edition, April 11), the editor in chief of Valley College’s newspaper, the Star, published a column that had the following messages:

1. Poor Latino and black people have more babies than the average middle-class family.

2. Having many children might detract from the involvement of the parents with any one child’s education.

3. When poor young adults have children, it is harder for them to pursue their own education.

This was followed by a self-styled intellectual, history teacher Ferrol Broslawsky, condemning the column on a strictly ad hominem basis. Then several students, perhaps learning from this history teacher to attack the person rather than the idea, voiced their outrage. Even an angry journalism teacher, Blanca Adajian, could find little to say other than to shout “racist.”

Other unnamed staff members considered “the column as too irresponsible to be protected by constitutional safeguards.”

Then, on a college campus--the place where ideas should come first and any idea should be open for discussion--there were physical threats to destroy the publication of the next issue of the Valley Star.

The faculty adviser to the college weekly--Tony Cifarelli, the only one who seemed to understand what a college education is supposed to be, and what a newspaper is supposed to do--decided to “paste up the paper” off campus.

But the bureaucrat, Dean Sam Mayo, objected because that was against the rules.

If Broslawsky and Adajian are representative of Valley College faculty, there are a few there who will teach our young adults how to deal with ideas with which they disagree. Condemning the idea or the person who holds it is not the way.

Do lower-class black and Latino people have more children than the middle-class? Does having several children interfere with the education of both the children and the parents? It is easy to shout “Racist” and “Bigot.” But why don’t those irresponsible teachers and students who disagree come up with facts and arguments to the contrary?

Shouldn’t the faculty of a department of journalism be teaching its students that a newspaper has both the right and the obligation to publish all reasonable facts and ideas?

And who is to decide when the First Amendment is to be obeyed? The faculty and staff of Valley College?

M. STEPHEN SHELDON

Studio City