In the last few weeks, we’ve seen debate over a controversial T-shirt, bias-related incidents that don’t seem biased at all and a speech by Professor Alan Charles Kors on how speech codes and bias committees treat us like children and strip us of our rights.

Last Thursday night, Kors criticized our Bias-Related Incidents Committee, declaring that when certain words or ideas are labeled “biased,” the committee is essentially saying that some opinions don’t have the right to be heard.

His point raises interesting questions: Who decides who gets to silence whom? Should the group with the majority opinion get to control the speech of the minority? Such a system is inherently unfair. It becomes downright dangerous when honest political speech, such as last year’s speech by Bay Buchanan, can be deemed “offensive,” labeled hate speech and considered for review by the committee.

A member of the committee tried to report Buchanan to campus police as a bias incident because she defended the Ithaca College Republican’s use of the words “feminazi” and “Nuremburg” on a flier for her event. What was the horrible statement made by Buchanan that enraged the committee? “You people need to get a life.” When they tried to make this quote a biased incident, it attracted national attention to the college, including a six-minute segment on “The O’Reilly Factor.” To the national press, it was an atrocity that offending someone is a high crime at Ithaca College.

Despite what some may tell you on this campus, no one has the right not to be offended. Rather than posting bias incidents on a bulletin board, students should fight speech with speech. If you don’t like what’s being said, don’t limit, condemn or forbid it: Tell everyone why you object.

In his speech, Kors described the actions of the citizens of Skokie, Ill., who lined the streets with their backs turned when neo-Nazis marched there. They effectively used the power of symbolic speech to tell the marchers they weren’t welcome. Kors suggested that students use methods like the citizens of Skokie, thus fighting bigoted speech with action.

After the Cortaca Jug T-shirts were produced a few weeks ago, many groups responded. Although Body-Related Issues, Discussion Groups, Education and Support attempted to limit free speech by reporting the T-shirt to the committee, they more effectively advertised their opposition through the use of a reaction flier that criticized various parts of the image. The flier let BRIDGES’ opinion be known, yet also allowed free speech to flourish. The Student Government Association’s decision to condemn the shirt and the bias committee’s consideration of it as a bias-related incident achieve nothing.

Some women were offended by the shirt, but many were not. As Kors suggested, limiting speech like the T-shirt suggests to certain groups (in this case, women) that they aren’t strong enough to form their own opinions. To prohibit the T-shirt, then, is downright insulting to women on this campus.

Free speech was never promised in an effort to protect popular speech. Programs like the Bias Alerts rip from students the right to hold an unpopular opinion, the right to voice that opinion and the right of those who are opposed to that opinion to truly debate it.

Truth can only be known when issues can be debated. Silencing one side of a debate because it is unpopular or unkind does not encourage tolerance, it only prohibits knowledge.

Michelle Meredith is a sophomore television-radio major and ICR member. E-mail her at smeredi1@ithaca.edu.