.
Adam Lack, a senior from Iowa, had sex with a woman he met at a fraternity house. The girl claimed he’d raped her. Adam never physically forced himself on her, she admitted, but she was drunk when she had sex, and therefore she said she could not have given proper consent.
Adam denied any “sexual misconduct.” I suspect Adam knew she was drunk. On the other hand, it must have been an odd form of rape because the girl spent the night with him and gave him her phone number the next morning. She only made her accusation five weeks after the incident (after talking to feminist activists).
Nevertheless, Brown [University] filed disciplinary charges against Adam, and students put his picture on the front page of the school newspaper.
Adam might have stayed at Brown and fought to clear his reputation, but he couldn’t take the pressure. After weeks of snubs from classmates, and hateful anonymous phone calls, Adam quit school, cleaned out his room, and went home to Iowa.
20/20’s producers thought this was an interesting controversy, so they asked me to go to Brown. Once there I was surprised to discover that campus activists didn’t consider this a controversy that had two sides. There was only one correct side: theirs. Someone who might disagree (like me) was not welcome.
The campus newspaper ran a story saying I was coming to Brown. A “women’s studies” professor described me as the “known woman hater” (my show on gender differences apparently proved I hate women). When we arrived, 30 students carrying signs that said “Students Against Sexual Violence” were chanting, “Stop sexual violence!” One young man (perhaps a professional activist, because he was no longer a student–he’d graduated years before) shouted into a microphone, “We don’t have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt anything. We just have to say, look, is it likely that a Brown student raped another Brown student? If we think it’s probably true, let’s kick him off campus!”
The demonstrators cheered, and then their leader asked if anyone else wished to speak. No one did. So I asked, “May a reporter ask a question?”
The demonstrators warily agreed, and I picked up the mike and said, “I’m here to do a report on the Adam Lack case, but I’m not sure I understand the current definition of rape. When I was a student, it meant physical force, maybe with a knife or gun–”
I never got to finish. The crowd screamed at me. “Get off campus! Get off this campus!” When one student tried to answer my question, the crowd shrieked, “Don’t talk to him!” Then they made it impossible for me to interview anyone by screaming in unison: “Rape is not TV hype! C’mon everybody, louder! Rape is not TV hype… Rape is not TV hype!”
Why would these students feel entitled to censor me? Because in their world (the smothering cocoon of left-wing academia), any challenge to their thinking must automatically be hate-filled and sexist (or racist, classist, or homophobic). They’d been taught that such comments create a “hostile environment,” where women, minorities, and other “victims” cannot learn. Therefore, say the campus activists and the totalitarian left, the opposing viewpoint must not be heard at all.
I understand how they feel. I want people to agree with me. I don’t like it when people criticize me. And people constantly say hateful things about me. I cringed when TV critic Tom Shales mocked me in the Washington Post, calling me “the long fingernail on the blackboard of television,” and when Ralph Nader called me “dishonest.” Even on abcnews.com, people publish vicious things. “Stossel is a butt weasel,” “a moron… a disgrace to journalism.” This is on my own message board. This is threatening to a reporter–credibility is all we have. I hate the criticism. It hurts my feelings. It creates a “hostile work environment.” But too bad for me. We are supposed to have free speech in America, so I just have to take it. The totalitarian left has to take it, too.
John Stossel
Chapter 15, “Free Speech”
Give Me a Break
