The Privilege of Censorship

This article was considered necessary by the author following ugly rumours of Executive high-handedness, including the censorship of a letter he had written on the Cafeteria.

The laws protecting the individual against slander or libel, the church against blasphemy and the state against anti-state activities are considered adequate by a general concensus of opinion. If it were otherwise strenuous efforts would have been made to extend these laws.

There is one point, however, upon which a considerable divergence of opinion, explicit but more commonly implicit, is evident; that is the rights of censorship.

This is quite natural for in some of its aspects censorship is intended to prevent the dissemination of material harmful for the community. And just who is to decide, whose opinion is sufficiently clear to weigh in the balance the "advisability" or otherwise of the material offered for publication.

In the community at large the all-powerful State decides this, one church has the Index, and in each town and city additional checks are provided by the local influential groups which bring pressure to bear to prevent this or that material being offered to the public for perusal. In our own University we have the University Council, the Professorial Board, each of whom has the ultimate legal right and who can bring pressure to bear to stop publication.

When any of these three groups, either nationally or in the University, wield sufficient power to censor material which—in their opinion—is unsuitable, then we have to all intents and purposes what we would call a totalitarian system if it happened almost anywhere else in the world.

For democracy presupposes the interplay, the counterbalancing of conflicting groups, whose open conflicts are ultimately decided upon by the voting public.

Curiously enough some of our student leaders (and here I am only offering an opinion) would deny this. They would say, "But how can you call it totalitarian when the students can voice an opinion?" When it is explained to them that they have not made certain relevant facts available to students so that they may more correctly form an opinion they would reply, "But the students can find out for themselves if they really wish!" This is a tautology, for who calls for a lire engine without first having knowledge of a fire? "We could present the facts," they say, "but who would care? Students are so apathetic!

Essentially such an attitude, and the conviction that they alone are capable of interpreting this "apathetic" silence, is the root of the Exec's belief that they hold the mandate to censor what they consider undesirable for public student consideration. Yet by censoring or seeking to censor or by being peeved when cheated of the right to censor controversial and provocative opinion they are unwittingly perhaps, throttling some whose voices echo from this apathetic void.

They deny this claiming, but those who are provocative are not representative of the average student, they are the vocal few in the void or are from a particular pressure group.

Of course they are not average students; who can say who is and if this average student can be found should all conform to this pattern? Perhaps the opinion is from a pressure group, but pressure groups are the working foundation of democracy.

Perhaps the Executive may venture one further utterance. They do not as a general rule like to censor material but in this particular case it would not be tactful to allow publication, perhaps matters could be best settled without a general broadcast of the information.

There are cases when this is true but, Ladies and Gentlement of the Executive, they are few and far between.

Use your privilege of censorship wisely. This is a University, not a kindergarten. You would be advised to remember this when thinking how not to displease the Board, the City Fathers, the General public and all others you can use as apologies for censoring our opinions. Try not to displease overmuch the students who, both by good luck and good management, you have been chosen to represent.

—A. C. Walsh.