Staff editorial: Coming out on top

Sometimes, people can surprise you.   
  

The Board of Regents, a generally cautious body of wealthy lawyers, politicians and business executives, is just about the last group of people we would expect to take a stand for free speech. But yesterday, it did just that. Earlier this semester, we advised students to stop insisting no porn policy be created, and instead work toward creating the least restrictive policy possible. We didn't think the regents would have the guts to put state funding for the university system at risk by defying a legislative order. We were wrong.

The regents voted unanimously to not adopt a policy regarding the screening of obscene films on University System of Maryland campuses. The vote reflected the board's consideration for a united front of students, administrators and faculty, who felt enacting such a policy infringed on academic freedom, made mountains out of molehills and was logistically impossible to implement. It was the right thing to do.

In some ways, the regents had no choice. Any decision they made would have drawn intense student protest and likely a costly lawsuit in which system officials would have had to defend a policy with which they didn't even agree. If the U.S. Supreme Court can't define pornography, as Board of Regents Chairman Cliff Kendall pointed out yesterday, how was the university system supposed to? And who would have screened every last documentary and feature student groups showed to make sure there were no nipple slips?

A porn policy would have been a constitutional, administrative and public relations debacle.
Hopefully the regents' decision ends this sad saga, which started with overbearing, sanctimonious state Sen. Andy Harris (R-Baltimore and Harford) grandstanding about the planned screening of Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge at the Hoff Theater. With mere days left in the legislative session, legislative leaders had no choice but to rush together a compromise. Because of Harris' twisted morality, in which preventing 18-year-olds from seeing penises on screen is more important than giving them life skills, the university's image was damaged, and administrators wasted countless hours developing what probably would have been a completely unconstitutional policy. Harris is likely to run against U.S. Rep. Frank Kratovil (D) for a congressional seat next year. We wish him nothing but the worst.

What Harris did was indefensible, but the General Assembly could top it by actually choosing to take action against the university system, either by cutting state funding or enacting a policy over the heads of administrators. With a $2 billion state deficit and a 7.2  percent unemployment rate on their hands, the Free State's elected representatives have better things to do than discuss pornography.

If Harris is the villain of the Porn Wars, there are people to be applauded as well. Let's start with the members of the Student Power Party, who held a protest screening of the film last year. This year's Student Government Association picked up the banner of their defeated rivals and ran with it. Administrators spoke out loud and clear against the policy, as did Student Regent Sarah Elfreth and Brady Walker, the chair of the university system's student council. University System Chancellor Brit Kirwan made the recommendation, and the regents stepped up to the plate with their vote.

Bravo.