Pennsylvania Univ. Changes Race Slur Rules

Six months after the University of Pennsylvania charged a white student with racial harassment for calling five black sorority sisters “water buffalo,” its new leaders announced Tuesday that they will scrap a controversial code barring racially demeaning speech because it is “not the best solution to the problems of racism in our community.”

The decision by interim president Claire Faigin and interim provost Marvin Lazerson drew reactions ranging from hope to fury among students at Penn. The school’s judicial code barring racial harassment became a lightning rod last spring for a national debate over political correctness and free speech on college campuses.

The student newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, said in an editorial that Faigin had “pulled the plug on free expression” by leaving the existing policy largely in place for the rest of this academic year. Kaplan Mobray, president of the Black Student League, hailed her for “listening to students’ concerns.”

Faigin, who succeeded Penn President Sheldon Hackney, now chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, said the speech code was viewed widely as a clamp on free expression and had not protected minorities adequately against harassment.

The University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin recently scrapped or scaled back codes banning hate speech after courts ruled that they violated the First Amendment.

The existing code at Penn classifies racially demeaning remarks as racial harassment punishable by sanctions ranging to expulsion. A committee of students, faculty and staff is to devise a replacement that Lazerson and Faigin said would rely more on “informal conflict resolution”--encouraging students to talk out their differences--than on the current legalistic approach.

In the interim, Lazerson said, he will oversee the judicial system and insist on using “informal mediation” in cases of alleged racial harassment. He said that, if the “water buffalo” case arose Tuesday, he would rule that students, not the administration, should resolve the issue.