Let My Pupils Go

My name is Pete Lorenz. I’m a student at Towson University studying Mass Communication and Economics. I started this blog originally for my writing for new media class, and quickly realized that I’ve wanted to write about freedom of expression issues for some time now. Of course, as a college student with limited transportation and monetary means, I will be focusing on universities in the area, mostly Towson.

Colleges are a hotbed for expression controversies, and the trouble is, you have a bunch of angst-driven teenagers and twenty-somethings running around, and you don’t always know who is really being oppressed and who is overreacting. The second problem I’ll run into is the elephant in the room: Towson University, and other universities, are partially privately owned and funded. This means that the idea of people having the right to free speech is partially diminished. You’re on someone else’s property, and I hold property rights to be as imperative to a free society as any other privilege. Once you step foot on someone else’s property, you forfeit many things.

But a college is different, especially one that’s also publicly owned. Colleges are about learning, and as such they have the responsibility to nurture free thinking and as many ideas as students can come up with. That’s why I find this issue compelling; it isn’t a black-and-white one. All cases are different. I hope to explore that in the coming months.

If you’d like to contact me, the best way is at my personal e-mail, plorenz88@gmail.com