A Risky Rule?
by Sean Clerget ‘09
Oh the Gentleman’s Rule, how
often art thou referenced. Much is
made of the rule, especially for freshmen,
who hear a great deal about it
during orientation. Lauded by many,
yet inevitably criticized at least once a
semester as being “dead”, the Gentleman’s
Rule creates at Wabash a kind of
experiment, an environment of constant
learning. Such an experiment,
however, has both risks and rewards.
We as a college community have
much to lose when it comes to the
Gentleman’s Rule. It provides us with
a large amount of freedom, probably
more than almost every other college
in the nation, but such freedom comes
with problems. The difficulty is in its
ambiguity. How do we define being
the word “gentleman”? What behavior
violates the rule and what doesn’t?
What happens when my interpretation
of the rule conflicts with someone
else’s interpretation? When should the
administration get involved? Doesn’t
it just mean we can do whatever we
want? The list goes on and on and on.
In a system with so many questions,
there are bound to be disputes, but
the important issue is how we handle
them.
The greatest risk to the Gentleman’s
rule is not necessarily its removal, but
instead it’s re-interpretation. This is
why the selection of the Dean of Students
is so important. I should mention
here that over my four years I think
Dean Bambrey and now Deans Raters
and Warner have, barring a few criticisms,
done a great job of maintaining
the spirit of the Gentleman’s rule. The
point though, is that it would simply
take one aggressive Dean of Students
to change everything. “That will never
happen” you might say. It will most
certainly happen, though, if as Wabash
students we fail consistently to live up
to our part of the bargain. If we don’t
hold each other accountable and deal
with problems amongst ourselves, and
behavioral problems grow and grow
over the years the College may be
forced to re-interpret the rule.
We could easily have all the restrictions
of major universities that
include massive rule books without
writing any of them down. It would
simply take a change in the way the
Gentleman’s Rule is interpreted. What
is considered a violation? Allow me
to digress for a moment into some
of the unbelievable things that have
happened on other college campuses
around the country, most of them
violating the free speech of students,
in order to demonstrate the possible
risks of the Gentleman’s Rule.
At Valdosta State University, a student
named Hayden Barnes criticized
the university president for building
a large and expensive parking garage
on campus. Barnes felt the parking
garage was an unnecessary expense
($30 million) designed to establish
the President’s legacy on campus. He
began a public campaign against the
project including newspaper articles
and small protests. Later Barnes posted
a collage on his face book page critical
of the President and his project. The
President responded by having Barnes
“administratively removed” from
school, or in other words kicked out.
At Johns Hopkins University a
student was suspended for an entire
year for “an offensive Halloween invitation.”
This case hits close to home
for those of us that were here when
a visiting professor wrote a letter to
The Bachelor signed by many faculty
members accusing the student body of
sexism and referencing, among other
things, a party hosted by a fraternity
called “CEOs and Office Hoes.” The
party in this case was called “Halloween
in the Hood.” While personally I
think these are dumb ideas for party
themes, I don’t think that a college
should be able to suspend you based
on what kind of party you have. The
student was charged by the University
for violating the rights of others,
harassment, and intimidation. The
Foundation for Individual Rights in
Education (FIRE) took the case, and
the FIRE Director of Legal and Public
Advocacy Samantha Harris had this to
say: “Hopkins should teach its students
that the way we deal with speech we
dislike in a free society is with more
speech, not with severe and life-altering
punishment.”
In another situation just 45 minutes
away at IUPUI, a man named
Keith Sampson who worked for and
attended the university, was charged
with racial harassment for reading
a book in his break room. The book
was called Notre Dame vs. the Klan:
How the Fighting Irish Defeated the
Ku Klux Klan, which details how
Notre Dame Students fought the KKK
in 1924 in order to battle prejudice
against Catholics and others. One of
his coworkers suggested that bringing
a book like this to work was equivalent
to bringing pornography, and another
coworker told him that she found the
KKK to be offensive. Sampson tried
to explain to both of them what the
book was about, but they wouldn’t
listen. A few days later he was told by
the school’s Affirmative Action Officer
that a co-worker had filed racial
harassment charges against him. The
school ordered him not to read the
book in front of coworkers.
In each of these cases, as I men-tioned in the Hopkins case, The
Foundation for Individual Rights in
Education intervened on behalf of the
accused. FIRE won the Valdosta State
and IUPUI cases when the rulings
were overturned and is still hard at
work on the Johns Hopkins case. These
cases seem extreme at first, but as you
browse FIRE’s website you begin to
see that they are all too common in
American higher education. Surely
this would never happen at Wabash
though, right? I pray that it does not,
but it would simply take an overly
active administration with a broad interpretation
of the Gentleman’s Rule.
Imagine being suspended for having
a party someone finds offensive or for
reading a book that others find offensive
regardless of its actual content.
I am grateful that these things have
not happened at Wabash College. I
know that if they did this publication,
The Bachelor, and many others
would be liable for criticizing the administration.
Some may be liable for
certain parties and various other possible
violations of a rather subjective
rule. Clearly our freedom would be
severely limited under the same rule
that currently extends said freedom.
I have been lucky these four years to
have enjoyed such great freedom. This
article, and these examples, is meant
as a caution about what could happen
if we aren’t careful. We must keep an
eye on the administration, be mindful
of who is chosen to lead this college,
and be active in what is going on in
administrative policy. These things are
all important, but the real responsibility
to maintain the Gentleman’s Rule
though, lies with the students.
The greatest benefit of the Gentleman’s
Rule is that it provides an
opportunity for self-governance. The
encouragement and the motivation
to hold each other accountable for
actions are implicit in the rule and
must not be forgotten by the student
body. This freedom is an incredible
opportunity to learn from one another.
Some of the best learning moments are
the most difficult ones. I remember a
few of them from the past few years
because they are difficult. They usually
involve someone telling you that
you are wrong, to which the natural
response is resistance and resentment.
People don’t like being told they are
wrong, but we all need to understand
that we aren’t always right. I’ve been
corrected many times throughout my
Wabash career by professors, upperclassman,
and even already this year
by Wabash men younger than me, but
it hasn’t been easy. I don’t intend to be
“preachy”, by no means am I the expert
on this subject, nor have I been all that
good at taking criticism from others
over the years. Instead it is something
I have recognized over the last four
years and something that I hope to
improve upon throughout my life, and
I think it is vital to the maintenance
of the Gentleman’s Rule.
Everyone in our community has
something unique to offer, we just
have to be willing to see it and learn
from them. Good fortune and wise
leadership have prevented abuses by
the administration in the past, but
the risk is very real. I hope that the
examples above have demonstrated
the importance of preserving the
Gentleman’s Rule and the freedom we
are lucky enough to enjoy, but I also
hope that everyone realizes that the
responsibility lies with us more than it
does with the administration. A major
change in the way the rule is enforced
or interpreted will come only as a reaction
to our failure to hold each other
accountable. If we want to maintain
the freedom we have, we must do so
by holding each other accountable,
because if we don’t do it ourselves,
eventually, the administration will.
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