[Reader-list] Policy, Anonymous Speech and Notice Boards

[abhayraj at nls.ac.in]

My continuing research on notice boards and anonymous speech in
universities in Bangalore provides opportunity for some tentative comments
on a ‘notice board policy’ of sorts, which it is believed, should inform
the rules/regulations pertaining to usage of boards in university
campuses. An abstract of the broad framework of this project is available
at (last visited on 4th October, 2004)
http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2004-January/003363.html.
Empirical research across selected universities in Bangalore shows that
very rarely is a comprehensive and clearly identifiable policy, as such,
ascertainable as regards the usage of notice boards – though, broad
generalizations that may be equated to policy dictates remain discernible
from custom, university authority actions, ongoing practice, etc.  While
discussing any specific policy as regards anonymous speech on university
notice boards, it is submitted, that certain key principles be necessarily
taken account of:

KEY PRINCIPLES

1. Respect for Freedom of Speech:
Despite the constitutional grandeur and exalted status of freedom of
speech, it remains vital, at a practical realist level, for policy to
acknowledge that student notice boards be accessible in such manner that
the freedom of speech of all students be respected. Simply put, all
students should have real (vis-à-vis merely formal) equal access to the
notice boards. Flowing from this proposition, any such responsible policy
must highlight the need to proactively ensure the non-existence of factors
(rules/regulations and other general determinant causes) that effectively
restrict access/use of a notice board by a particular student/group
thereby impliedly curtailing the right to freedom of speech. The outer
boundary limiting the ambit of the ‘proactive need’ is easily enough
determined by the responsible authority by reference to all existing
factors and circumstances and prevailing legal discourse (for example, the
existing jurisprudence under Article 14 and Article 15 of the Constitution
provides ready remedy to the problem of identifying a clear outer limit.
To further emphasize the point, a notice board policy should effectively
reflect that caste, religion, race, sex, sexual orientation, place of
birth, language, ideology, etc. (this can be easily enough decided upon by
the responsible authority) will not be restricting factors to access.

2. Importance of Anonymity:
Secondly, the recognition of anonymity as an important safeguard
protecting the freedom of speech of a minority individual/group. Three
factors that heighten the importance of anonymity in a university setting:
a)	The heightened role and significance of the notion of ‘peer pressure’
in an educational institution (generally, but not always competitive)
scenario.
b)	The general nature of faculty-student relationship (power inequality,
marks/grades/recommendations dependance, moral discipline, age-division,
etc. etc.) and the attributed significance and nature of student
obligation to  the institution/faculty.
c)	The existence of mainstreams and vulnerable fringes within the student
community, and all consequent physical/social/emotive ramifications of
such power/interest groupings during formative periods of education.

3. Possible Abuse of Notice Boards:
Recognizing the existence of mainstreams and vulnerable fringes and the
occurrence of what may be termed hate speech (including offensive speech)
in most public-discussion fora implies recognition of the fact that notice
boards contain an in-built risk of possible abuse resulting in overall
negative consequences. Therefore, notice board policy must positively
assert the need to prevent occurrence of such hate-speech and must seek to
institutionalize practices that minimize the likelihood of such hate
speech. The need for such an approach draws strength from awareness of the
particularly negative consequences of hate speech in a university context.

4. Objective Sought to be Achieved by Restrictions on Notice Board:
In light of the above principles, it is necessary that when it is sought
to place restrictions on access/usage of a notice board, such restrictions
actually achieve the objectives justifying their existence and do not in
the process unnecessarily/wrongly curtail the freedom of speech of any
individual/section of the student community or increase the risk thereof.
In essence, the correct balance between the need to prevent hate speech
and the need to promote/respect freedom of speech is of instrumental
significance in any such notice board policy.
With respect to anonymity and hate speech, it is believed that a proper
starting ground should involve acceptance of two principles:
a)	Firstly, that a blanket ban on anonymity per se is undesirable as it
places a significant impediment to disadvantaged/marginalized
individuals/groups to access public notice boards and thereby effectively
curtails the right to freedom of speech.
b)	The facilitation of unregulated anonymous speech on university notice
boards increases the likelihood of hate speech, and reduces the
accountability of such proponents of such hate speech.

POLICY PROPOSALS AS REGARDS THE AUTHORITY ADMINISTERING/IN-CHARGE OF A
STUDENT NOTICE BOARD

1. Obligations of the Notice Board Authority
Firstly, it is necessary that one accept the notion that the authority
(either university authorities or student groups) administering a
particular student notice board has an obligation to prevent access, via
the notice board it administers, to material that constitutes hate speech.
Such a basic acceptance effectively precludes a ‘hands-off’ approach of
non-accountability that is common in most university campuses. Of course,
such an obligation will not extend to cases where offensive material has
been placed on a notice board illegally – that is, outside of the
prescribed/permitted route for display of notices.

2. Discretion of the Notice Board Authority
Secondly, in the interests of the right to freedom of speech, it is
necessary that the discretion of the authority in preventing particular
speech from being displayed on the notice board be guided by a clear
definition/articulation of what constitutes hate speech/unacceptable
speech. This facilitates attainment of the correct balance between
prevention of hate speech and respect for anonymity (and correspondingly
free speech).

POLICY MODELS FOR NOTICE BOARD USAGE

I have outlined below a number of possible theoretical models that could
govern notice board usage in a university, with specific thrust on the
aspect of anonymous speech. Importantly, a combination of essential
features from different models might provide the most suitable solution
keeping in light the specificities of different university settings and
factors (for example, the accepted importance of free speech, existence of
foundation for institutional regulation/governance, prevalent levels of
hate-speech incidence, clear existence of marginalized groups, level of
existence of notice-board culture and use, etc.) In the interests of
brevity, the defining features and the primary pros and cons of each model
have been outlined below.

1. Open Access System – Unregulated.
The most basic model would be an open access unregulated system of notice
boards where any notices may be put up not being subject to restrictions
of any form. Under such a system of course, anonymous speech would have
the same status as non-anonymous speech.
Advantages and Limitations: While being greatly facilitative of free
speech, such a system would offer absolutely no protection against hate
speech and its negative consequences. Further, it would also render
greatly difficult any accountability for hate speech incidence.

2. Open Access System – Regulated.
Similar to the above system, any notices may be put up not being subject
to restrictions at source of any form. However, notices deemed undesirable
(in accordance with clearly stipulated criterion as mentioned earlier) can
be removed at any stage by the competent authority.
Advantages and Limitations: Such a model has advantages similar to that
above, with one important addition – the negative consequences of hate
speech can be significantly checked through prompt removal of offensive
notices by the competent responsible authority/general student populace.
On the flip side, non-accountability for hate speech, and the legitimate
window of opportunity (reduced but still existent) for hate speech, still
persist.

3. Content-Based Authorization System.
A basic content-based authorization system permits only those notices that
have been authorized by the responsible authority, to be actually
displayed on the notice board. Such authorization could be denied only in
those situations where the notice is deemed undesirable in accordance with
clearly stipulated criterion (as has been addressed earlier) so as to
prevent excessive fetters on the freedom of speech. Since the
authorization is dependant only on the content of the notice, such a
system will treat anonymous speech and non-anonymous speech on the same
footing, with anonymity not posing, as of itself, any impediment to access
the notice board. In operation, when notices without authorization are put
up on the notice board, these remain subject to be taken off by the
authority responsible or the general student populace.
Advantages and Limitations: This model is clearly in greater consonance
with a balanced approach vis-à-vis the two models above, both of which
weigh decidedly in favour of absolute freedom of speech and anonymity,
possibly at the costs of prevention of hate speech. The primary advantage
of this model is that is offers no legitimate window/opportunity for hate
speech. Therefore, in such a model, the incidence of hate speech will be
exclusively through non-institutionalized means, thereby reducing both the
likelihood of such hate speech, and overall weakening the case for any
justifications of such hate speech. Further, while such a model is wholly
supportive of anonymity (subject to the limited exception pointed out
hereafter), and thereby promotes the freedom of speech of marginalized
speech, it does so without any negative repercussion on the issues of
accountability – the mere fact that an anonymous notice has been
authorized and is then legitimately displayed on a notice board indicates
that its content is such that issues of accountability for hate speech do
not feature here.
The limited disadvantage of this basic model is that the anonymity it
guarantees is not absolute since the grantor of authorization remains
aware of the identity of the source of the notice. This minor yet
significant limitation can be suitably overcome by considering hybrid
models premised on content-authorization but still accommodating for
absolute anonymity.

4. Hybrid Content-Based Authorization Systems
Such models, while based primarily on the above outlined structure, have
the added feature/advantage of expressly accommodating for
greater/complete anonymity. One approach could be to permit anonymous
messages to be forwarded for authorization through any other student,
thereby ensuring that the identity of the notice source is known only to
the person(s) so chosen by the source of the notice, and is not available
to the possibly less sympathetic/discreet authority responsible for the
notice board.
Another possible approach is to facilitate the creation of an exclusive
mechanism whereby anonymous messages may be directly delivered/sent to the
authority (simple suggestions being the possibility of email submissions
or the creation of a collection box for anonymous notices) for
authorization and display on the notice board without the source being
required to disclose her/his/its identity to the responsible authority.
Such an approach effectively ensures that no legitimate forum is available
for hate-speech, while at the same time being sensitive to the need for
anonymity of certain students/groups within the university community.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
As is fairly evident, the approach guiding the above analysis emphasizes
on the prevention of institutionally legitimated hate-speech through
notice boards while institutionally protecting the expression of such
anonymous speech (not falling within the ambit of hate-speech). While
recognizing the need for a guided approach to prevent the expression of
hate speech in all its forms in university campuses (a detailed study of
which remain outside the scope of this project), one must not lose sight
of the the importance of protecting legitimate anonymous speech in
university settings.
Secondly, we believe that a guided policy approach regarding anonymous
speech remains preferable to a spontaneous case-by-case approach (as
illustrated by the case-study undertaken in NLSIU and priorly outlined in
my third posting, available at (last visited on 8th October, 2004)
http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2004-June/003845.html ), which
often hastily and wrongly compromises the interests and utility behind
protection of anonymous speech in a blind rush to prevent the occurrence
of hate-speech. It is towards fleshing out the contours of such a policy
perspective that the present project is undertaken, and it is submitted
that such considerations do merit serious thought with regard to practices
pertaining to notice board usage in universities, in light of the
significant negative consequences possible when one loses sight of the
relative importance of anonymity in speech in universities.

I look forward to any comments, suggestions or information. I can be
contacted at abhayraj at nls.ac.in

Abhayraj Naik