Just Curious

upset

I was upset today by my alma mater UPenn's near decision to sanction a student for publishing lewd pictures online.

This is totally unacceptable, and I'm very glad that the Office of Student Conduct at Penn, which is quite well known for being jelly-spined, decided to back off and dropped all the "charges" against the student.

What happened was there was this couple having sex in front of a window in one of those highrises. A peeping tom-ish student took pictures of it and then posed them on CollegeHumor.com. The Office of Student Conduct at Penn then took action and threatened to sanction the photographer. When Dr. Alan Kors, Professor of History and champion of (dare I say it?) individual liberty (hell yeah!!!) stepped in to defend the student, and when C. Edwin Baker, Gallicchio Professor of Law and constitutional expert at Penn noted how the photographer is protected by (you betcha) the 1st Amendment, the OSC, spineless as usual, dropped the charges.

This is almost like a replay of the "water buffalo" debacle 12 years ago. And apparently Penn bureaucrats, cowardly and spineless as they are, did become a little bit smaaaahhhter. Back in the golden days of political correctness they were beholden to the PC crowds. Nowadays they have to pay a little more attention to the libertarians as well. Those unprincipled cowards...

Now the lawyer for the "victim," a young-looking fella' who just got his license to practice last year, claimed that his client ain't not gonna settle with this. He said they're gonna bring a suit. A suit at common law (boo woo...), he says, an action in tort. What tort? Somethin' edible? Intentional tort. What intentional tort? Invasion of privacy.

Ah...let me see. I don't know much about the law, but the last time I looked at the hornbooks it is said that the public nature of the disclosed facts is, surprise, valid defense. Throw in consent and other whatnot and...there p-r-o-b-a-b-l-y i-s n-o-t a c-a-s-e.

Shall we then concern ourselves with possible court sanctions on the plaintiff and her counsel then? Oh crap...gotta start studyin' my civ pro. Rule 11 sanction, whatever...

posted by James Chang @ 12:12 AM