By Heather Fabritze
News Editor
Months have passed since President of Washington College Dr. Mike Sosulski requested a document establishing free expression principles at WC, and the Presidential Task Force on Free Expression distributed the first copy of their draft to the campus for feedback.
In an email with the three-page proposal attached, English professor and task force co-chair Dr. Sean Meehan recounted Dr. Sosulski’s original charges for the group: to develop foundational principles — not policies — regarding free expression, and to ensure they valued both individuals’ freedoms and WC’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
The President’s task force immediately commenced weekly meetings through the end of the academic year in May, in which they broke down the issue, surveyed existing resources and example models, and began drafting the statement.
The group shared their first version with the former Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion Dr. Alisha Knight, Assistant Dean for Student Engagement and Success Tricia Biles, Diversity Committee, Faculty Council, Staff Council, and professor of law at Alabama University Dr. Bryan Fair. The document then underwent a second round of editing from the task force and Dr. Sosulski.
Following students’ feedback on and endorsement of this version, which Dr. Meehan requested through a survey link in his campus-wide email, the committee will enter another round of drafting.
Dr. Meehan co-chaired the group with senior Stephen Hook. There were only five other members — two more faculty, one more student, and two staff — and Dr. Meehan and Hook believe that the small number of participants helped with getting discussions off the ground and resolved.
“I think there was a natural process of agreement and disagreement in a sense of clarification,” Dr. Meehan said. “’What does this phrase mean? What could it possibly mean?’ I think one of the clarifications we all saw was that this discussion of potential multiple ways of interpreting a phrase is actually a good thing, because we want this document to be the start of conversation and not the end of it.”
The PDF the task force distributed to the campus community proposes five principles: academic freedom, inclusion, engagement, generosity, and responsibility. According to the draft’s acknowledgements section, members pulled inspiration from various groups and writings, including philosopher Immanuel Kant, the American Association of University Professors, PEN America, and the Chicago Statement.
Although other institutions have written principles of free expression, the goal of this process was to make a document that would be specifically organic to WC and its values. Dr. Meehan argues that the strength of their draft comes from the academic traditions that the College respects so strongly, in addition to the ways “we engage with ideas, curate ideas, and express those ideas.”
“I think the principles emphasize that we don’t have to search very far to find our guidance,” Dr. Meehan said. “It’s in academics, in the ways that we think about inquiry and ideas, and so I think that comes through. I hope it comes through.”
The task force’s writing process was wholly collaborative, continuing in-person, on Zoom, and through comments on a shared document. The final result blended every representative’s voice and word choice, which was based on extensive research members did outside of meetings.
Any disagreements within the group centered on Dr. Sosulski’s charge that the document should inform future policies, but not act as policies themselves. Some members of the group considered wording in the original draft to be too similar to conduct language.
Instead, Dr. Meehan hopes that the principles, including the concept of generosity, will inform other decisions like the current process to create guidelines for campus events and speakers.
Dr. Meehan describes “generosity” as the idea that we, as humans, cannot know everything there is to know.
“I need to listen to other people out there, and I also need the generous part — we need to assume good faith, and also allow another key component of education, [which] is mistakes,” Dr. Meehan said. “We can only learn by making mistakes, and so we need space to do that.”
The third principle, engagement, is Hook’s personal favorite — he believes it lays out how crucial free expression is to the concept of liberal arts.
“We inherently are surrounded by different ideas and ways of thinking, and that is what’s so special about the kind of college that we chose to come to,” Hook said. “We need free expression and safe ways to express our ideas in order to truly have a liberal arts education experience. These opportunities sometimes can push students out of their comfort zone or test boundaries, but it’s all part of growing and learning.”
The task force will adjust their proposed principles after reading the survey’s responses and hosting a virtual town hall on Sept. 19 at 4:30 p.m. to hear immediate feedback. According to Dr. Meehan, ideal critiques would come in the form of content criticism rather than structural criticism.
“You could do this kind of statement 10 different ways, and so it’s not going to be that,” Dr. Meehan said. “If we were to change the statement substantially just based on editing, then the next round, someone else would say, ‘Why did you change it?’ We have to make some choices and decisions.”
As the task force’s student co-chair, Hook believes that the process has prioritized student experiences and that this stage of drafting will continue to do so.
“Any edits or negative feedback that we get will be taken extremely seriously because we are motivated to make this a quality document that actually serves a purpose at the College,” Hook said. “This isn’t performative or self serving in any way…so if the campus has issues with it, we want to address those and make sure that this document serves us as well as it can.”
Students, faculty, and staff should submit their form feedback on the principles by Sept. 20. There are currently no plans to distribute another follow-up survey, although a student colloquium on Oct. 9 and 10 over fall break will focus on student perception of free expression at WC.
Photo by Ella Humpreys.
Photo Caption: President Sosulski personally selected the faculty, staff, and students who would sit on the task force, including Dr. Meehan.