Student’s Suit to Add Insults to Thesis Is Denied

Like many graduate students, Chris Brown believes he was underpaid, overworked and not respected.

Brown, though, made a federal case out of it.

For nearly two years, the former materials engineering graduate student at UC Santa Barbara has waged a quixotic battle against the university, insisting on his right to lambaste university officials and professors in the pages of his master’s thesis.

Brown made his remarks--initially obscene, later toned down--in what he labeled a “disacknowledgments” section of the thesis, in place of “acknowledgments” students traditionally offer their mentors.

Angry at the insults in the 1999 document, which described the dean and staff of the graduate division as “fascists” and the library staff as “Draconian,” among other criticisms, university officials refused for more than a year to grant Brown his degree. They finally relented, but have nonetheless declined to file the thesis among thousands of others in the university library. Placement on library shelves is typically the only way to make a thesis available to other students or scientists.

“It’s a question of free speech,” said Brown, 29, who works as an analytical manager for a Santa Monica software company. “I have the right to say what I think in my own thesis, even if the university doesn’t like it.”

Last year, Brown filed suit, alleging that six university officials, including UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang, Graduate Dean Charles Li and Library Director Sarah Pritchard, had infringed his constitutional right to free speech and academic freedom. He sought unspecified financial damages but also demanded that the university place his thesis, with its “disacknowledgments” intact, in the library.

On Monday, the dispute reached a federal courtroom in Los Angeles, where U.S. District Judge Ronald Lew tossed the case out, granting the university’s motion for a summary judgment. Brown and his attorneys said Monday that they will appeal, both for Brown’s sake and for that of other graduate students.

In a brief hearing, Lew told attorneys that Brown had no constitutional right to compel the university to accept the thesis, complete with its disacknowledgments.

University officials said they were gratified by the ruling, calling it a victory for the free speech rights of the faculty and administrators involved.

Yang said Brown’s rights had not been violated.

“The student was free to speak his mind, as are all students,” he said in a statement. “There are many opportunities on our campus for public discussion. At the same time, faculty members have the right and responsibility to evaluate student academic work, and to decide what is appropriate to include in an academic paper.”

University of California counsel Christopher Patti said Brown had violated the university’s rules by trying to include his angry denouncements in his thesis, rather than seeking to publish them on a Web site or in a newspaper.

“He was trying to get the faculty members to sign [off on the document] indicating they approved of the disacknowledgments section,” Patti said.

The events that led to the case began in June 1999, as Brown completed his master’s thesis on the crystal-building properties of abalone shells.

As he wrapped up nearly four years of what he describes as drudgery, Brown could not bring himself to thank the professors he believed had hindered his graduate school career.

So he decided to blast them--and a host of others--in a parting shot. In two pages of obscenity-laced language, which he later revised, he criticized UC regents as biased and corrupt, blamed the university’s library staff for “incomprehensible fines” and a “poor attitude,” and even took a shot at former Gov. Pete Wilson, calling him a “supreme government jerk who has personally overseen the demise of the university.”

He reserved some of his harshest words for the dean and staff of the graduate division: “I’d rather take a hot stick in the eye [than] deal with your bureaucratic nonsense.”

Brown did not submit the pages with his thesis, believing that would give his faculty committee a reason to reject the document. The thesis was approved but the added pages were later discovered by a library assistant, who reported them to university officials, and the approval was revoked.

“I was angry,” Brown said, acknowledging that he is not proud of his obscene statements. “At the end of my graduate career, I had a lot of disillusionment. I couldn’t honestly give praise. I wanted to raise some eyebrows, but I never expected all this.”

Brown, who was unable to work in his field until the university relented and gave him his degree, said he has spent about $12,000 on the dispute and the legal case, not including his lost wages.

“But hey, what they were trying to do was just egregious,” he said. “It’s been worth it.”

Attorney Paul Hoffman, who is representing Brown, said he plans to appeal the ruling as soon as possible. Hoffman, a former legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said the case involves important principles of free speech and academic freedom.

“Christopher believes very strongly in the principles at stake,” Hoffman said after the hearing.

In court documents, Hoffman argued that Brown would not have had a problem if he had chosen to praise, rather than castigate, university officials.

“Some [graduate student theses] included gushy personal statements and even cartoons,” Hoffman said. Others included criticism of faculty members or administrators, although perhaps none so pointed as Brown’s, the lawyer acknowledged.

Other civil liberties advocates predicted an eventual victory for Brown. “This is an open and shut, slam-dunk 1st Amendment case,” said Thor Halvorssen, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a Philadelphia-based civil rights group.

“The university, in this case, is wrong, wrong, wrong,” Halvorssen said.