First, let me start off by saying that I am not a member of CP Salsa, nor do I know any of the 200-plus members of that club. Heck, for a while there I thought the Salsa Club was a subdivision of the Nutrition Department. I normally try to straddle the fence regarding touchy issues such as censorship, but the demands and the actions taken by the protestors against the provocative Salsa ads at long last forced me to select a side.
I’m sure we’re all well aware of our First Amendment rights, and for those who insisted on plastering the “Cal Poly Advisory” stickers all over the provocative parts of the Salsa posters, I have this to say to them: I hope you mass-produced those stickers. Those same individuals better be running up to those females here at Cal Poly who have donned a cleavage revealing top or a guy in a muscle shirt and completely envelop them with advisory stickers. There is no difference between that course of action and what they have done recently. Only then will we truly see whether or not the students here at Poly will allow you to confiscate pieces of our rights.
Furthermore, if the advertisements are really as bad as Professor Lynn (or anyone else with enough disapproval to remove private property from the public halls) make them out to be, why don’t they just leave them up? If they claim that the ads posed by those such as Roberts showing cleavage is blatantly offensive and degrading to women, then one would think it would impose a very negative and undignified impression on the Salsa club as a whole, thus driving away potential club members, especially women. What better way is there to thwart CP Salsa than to let their own offensive ads self-destruct on themselves?
Those advisory stickers that were used to cover up the offensive bits of the posters quoted preserve the innocent? I think they should be followed by “uphold the censorship” or “remove our rights.”
Glen Sun
Electrical engineering senior
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