Dear Editor:

If the university wants to pursue its purported mission of becoming a top research institution, it cannot scare off academics by compromising the rights of professors to teach on their own terms and require that students stay within certain reasonable, explicitly-stated parameters when completing assignments (e.g. only using material from the text or lectures). It cannot simultaneously support its staff and cow to the intellectual bullying of groups like the ADF.

Christine Mize’s claim that Professor Dreuth and the university “violated her free speech and religious rights” is akin to a Creationist biology major turning in a paper citing unfounded theories in a 500-level embryology course, and then complaining (and calling her lawyer) when a professor told her to discuss only the theories taught in class. Mize’s paper, if it was turned in on time and met the stated requirements, should be graded and returned. However, the university should not be making unnecessary apologies or assurances for groundless accusations using loaded terms such as “rights infringement.” To do so is to dig the ground out from beneath the feet of those we charge with the most important mission at this school: that of educating us as students.

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On a side, but important note, there is no basis in the scientific literature for a “post-abortion stress syndrome.” You are infinitely more likely to find the term utilized by anti-choice groups such as Jackson County Right to Life than by mental health professionals. The American Psychological Association wrote in a 1990 Science publication that the “weight of the evidence” indicates that a first-trimester abortion of an unwanted pregnancy “does not pose a psychological hazard for most women.” Furthermore, the current vice president of the American Psychiatric Association wrote in a 1992 JAMA article that there is “no evidence of an abortion-trauma syndrome,” and there is no mention of any such syndrome in the DSM. The DAILY EGYPTIAN editorial page is not the place for this debate (which is, to be sure, ongoing), until it’s concluded the term belongs between quotation marks. For more on this debate, see the excellent New York Times Magazine article from January ’07.

Bryan Darger is a junior studying philosophy and psychology