Gallego Murcia1

Nuria Gallego Murcia

Professor Scaife
RHET 1312
September 18, 2016
Hate speech affecting lives
According to the American Bar Association, hate speech is the speech that attacks,
threatens, or insults a person or group on the basis of national origin, ethnicity, color, religion,
gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability(American Bar, par 1).Nowadays this
kind of speech is over all the world and primarily in college campus. It is really frequent in
students living all together with different cultures and different points of view of life. I think this
topic is really important because there are many cases where people are victims of threatening
with no reason and we all should feel safe inside this world. Writing this paper may help some
people to find an answer of what can they do to stop this harmful speech against others. I have
chosen this topic because I want to explore more deeply in how is hate speech affecting people
inside campus, why can it not be under control all the time and how can campus administrators
try fix this kind of behaviours.
Going through all the articles that I have read about hate speech I can conclude that all of
them have something in common: free speech. This is a right that everyone has so even though
some people use it a bad way and try to hurt others based on their race or sexuality, they are
trying to end it up working on associations to prevent hate speech and to get a safe environment
with no marginalism. The majority of people go to college expecting that it will be the best four
years of their lives but unfortunately for some of them can be the worst four years of their lives.
Group of people use an harmful speech against others and they try to make them feel like trash

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therefore they feel unsafe and uncomfortable inside campus which should be the opposite way
they should feel like home inside campus. But my question is what is the point of that? Those
people who ty to humiliate their victims what do they have in mind? It is not fair that some
people have to drop college and ruin their future because a group of people try to make them feel
threatened all the time. Every student has the right of finishing their degrees with the goal of
getting a good job in the future but if they cannot do it because they feel incapable to keep
dealing with these situations, they will have to drop it and they will not probably fight for their
dreams. For instance, I met a guy two weeks ago that was telling about how his freshman year
went. While I was listening to him my mind was blowing up because I could not believe how
people can act like that with others. He told me that he had a roommate who called him with a
despective nickname every single day. My friend accept it like a joke the first two days but the
third day he was tired already so he asked him to stop nicely but he thought it was funny so he
just kept calling him with the nickname. Although my friend knew he was not doing it with bad
intention, he did not like it so he asked him again to stop but he refused to stop. Instead of getting
in a fight with him my friend went to get help and things changed after this and he apologized.
But that was not enough for my friend because it had been a hard semester so he asked him to
move out because he was not comfortable with him in the same room so the director of the
building made him to move out because the behavior he had with my friend. I just want to say
that sometimes hate speech is unconsciously and we do not realize we are hurting people in
several ways. So hate speech inside campus can affect many people and universities want to have
a safe and healthy environment so they are trying to fix those problems between students and
trying to inculcate to everybody that each person is different and has different opinion a thoughts
about life.

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Hate speech cannot be under control all the time. It can be supervised in indoor places
but when people are outdoor nobody can control what they are doing or saying so it is right there
when hate speech occurs. Sometimes people can get hurt badly even though it can affect their
health and that is what every university want to fix. The article from the ACLU talks about they
are trying to inculcate all students how important is to respect each student on campus as we
want to be treat(s. However they are not banning free speech they are just teaching them how to
use free speech without hurting anybody. How we see in the same article, the ACLU thinks that
if the students talk about all of the problems that they have between them instead of fighting or
humiliating each other it will be a better way to fix all the problems.
Some universities cannot afford that and they have to appeal to civil court in many of the
cases. Sometimes students feel more comfortable if they know that the police or the civil court is
going to take care of their cases. Another of my question about this topic is what happen after all
with the responsible of someone have to drop college or feel unsafe and uncomfortable in
campus, what happen to those people. Do they go to jail, do they receive a punishment? In some
of the researches that I have done universities, think that need to be punish because if they do
not see consequences on their acts now they are not going to know how to react in the future and
probably they are going to fail every job or situation they will have in the future. So they think is
better to fix that problem now instead of waiting until it would be too late. If they learn how to
respect people now they should be able to do it the the future because they will learn the lesson.
To sum up this exploratory paper, I want to say that I am glad I choose this topic because
it made me think about all the people that are going through this problem and how bad and
empty do they have to feel every time someone treat them in such a bad way. I found out that
hate speech is increasing more and more every year but also more universities are working on

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fixing the issue teaching them how to interact with people in a proper way. Hate speech taught
me that everyone is different and that is a reason why we cannot treat people in different way, we
are all human and we have the right to live our life respecting each others too. And also it taught
me that if everybody put just a little bit of effort to have a better environment, it will be way
better and we all will feel better with ourselves.

Works Cited
"First Amendment: Hate speech code struck." ABA Journal 1994: 88. JSTOR Journals.
Web. 22 Sept. 2016.

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Barrett, Michael L. "Hate Speech." Salem Press Encyclopedia (2015): Research Starters.
Web. 22 Sept. 2016.
Graham, David A.When Campus Hate-Speech Rules Go Further Than the Law The
Atlantic. The Atlantic, 10 November 2015.
Hate speech on campus American Civil Liberties Union. American Civil Liberties Union,
2016 ACL.

<https://www.aclu.org/other/hate-speech-campus?

redirect=hate-speech-campus>

Annotated Bibliography
<http://rhet1312comp.weebly.com/uploads/5/7/2/2/57221629/hate_speech_op_ed.pdf>
This article talks about how hate speech can change the perspective of going to college. Students
used to think about college as their best years of their life but now they are afraid to have to face
those situations with people that try to make their lives impossible. Hate speech should be punish

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because everyone has the right to free speech and some people do not express their opinion
because they are scared about other people can do to them if they do not agree with them.
Another thing that this article mention is that colleges should start considering punishments for
this individuals because if they do not see reactions they are going to keep acting in the same
way and in their future lives when they have to face these situations they are going to have a bad
reaction and then it is going to bad consequences in their daily life.

Saul, Stephanie.Campuses Cautiously Train Freshmen Against Subtle Insults

International New York Times. International New York Times, 6 September 2016.
In this article, they talk about microaggressions inside campus. Microaggressions do not always
have to be verbal, they can also be nonverbal and environmental. College campus around United
States have been working against subtle insults and they have created associations with alumnus
and campus staff to talk about how to prevent hate speech and how not to use determinate
expressions of racism to not hurt anybody. Some people use expressions unconsciously and hurt
others because they make them feel excludes from the rest of the society. In those associations
they teach them how to interact with people in a correctly cultural way without using
microaggressions. They exchange thoughts and opinions and learn how to interact with other
without using hate speech based on racism and marginalizing people.

Hate speech on campus American Civil Liberties Union. American Civil Liberties Union,
2016 ACL.

<https://www.aclu.org/other/hate-speech-campus?

redirect=hate-speech-campus>
This article from the ACLU talks about speech codes and how hate speech can be fixed by
working on it all together instead of denying it. In almost every college campus, hate speech is

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reflected in gay people and people of other colors and the ACLU talks about how that need to
stop but without banning free speech. We are in a country where free speech is a right and
everybody has to express their opinions and thoughts without caring about what other people
think. So that is why ACLU thinks that instead of being afraid to say something because other
people are going to humiliate you, we all should talk and work the problems between each other
with no fighting and we should try to remove the hate speech making other people see that there
is no reason to treat others in a bad way and all together can do a better job.

Graham, David A.When Campus Hate-Speech Rules Go Further Than the Law The
Atlantic. The Atlantic, 10 November 2015.
This article about the University of Missouri tells us about the attempt of this one to have a
balance in the campus between people feeling safe and confident and free speech. Gently, racism
problems inside campus have been transformed in free speech debate. There was an email
circulating in campus about hate speech which contained true information but there was no need
to say that. In the email, the campus police said that that hurtful or bad intentions or comment to
another person were not a delinquency but it will be sanctioned. Many of the students in campus
have been using court to defend their rights because the university did not do anything so they
had to recur to other alternatives.

Barrett, Michael L. "Hate Speech." Salem Press Encyclopedia (2015): Research Starters.
Web. 22 Sept. 2016.
In this article we can see a brief definition of hate speech and the different laws. Also it says that
free speech in imprescindible in the society, we just have to know how to act with it. Hate speech
can affect personally in different ways like emotionally, hurt, neutrally...Hate speech can be

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controlled in determined places but for instance in open places cannot be under control. The
same thing happen in campus in college that in outdoor places hate speech cannot be controlled
so the victims have to know how to react or how to manage the situation because colleges are
trying to put under control the whole university to avoid the harmful behaviour that some
students have to deal with but it has been unsuccessfully so hate speech is just ban in determined
places watched by some faculty members.

"First Amendment: Hate speech code struck." ABA Journal 1994: 88. JSTOR Journals.
Web. 22 Sept. 2016.
In this article you can clearly see a great example of hate speech unconsciously. It talks about a
basketball coach who called two of his player with a derogatory name and believe it or not it had
consequences. Even though the coach thinks those things do not matter, they can get hurt and he
can get fire because hurting one of his players with unconsciously hate speech. In the article we
can see how little things can make a big deal at the end. The basketball coach from University of
Michigan got fired because he has to be respectful out and in the course with all the members of
his team.