Recently, fliers for student organizations and events have been disappearing off campus bulletin boards. Those involved with the Student Organization Resource Center believe that although fliers are often removed on campus, it is often not for the reasons that one might guess. Fliers might be removed by students who want to remember the information on the flier or who like the image on it.

Fliers could also be being removed because some students might not agree with the organization’s mission or the topic of an event and want to keep others from seeing it.

ETSU student Sam Smith believes the latter is the most likely reason for the removal of recent LGBTieS fliers.

“I’m sure LGBTieS fliers are being removed from bulletins by those who are uneducated and ignorant about homosexuality and equality,” says Smith, the public relations officer for LGBTieS, ETSU’s gay-straight student alliance.

The effect on students looking for acceptance and community is Smith’s biggest concern regarding the fliers’ removal.

“People deserve to know if there are groups in which they can feel welcome instead of ridiculed or cheapened,” says Smith, who is also a staff writer for the East Tennessean.

“It is not impossible a student walked by a bulletin board in search of a flyer about gay rights and saw instead a blank space.”

The removal of a student organization’s fliers is unnecessary says former LGBTieS President Evan Baker.

“What I just don’t understand is how a flier hanging on a wall can offend someone so much,” says Baker, an ETSU graduate student who also writes a vegetarian column for the East Tennessean. “It isn’t like members of LGBTieS are walking around, wading the fliers up, and throwing them at people.

“It really just goes to show that the campus climate isn’t as improved or as accepting as people like to believe. If the fliers belonged to a fraternity or sorority, it would be pursued more widely and intently.”

The SORC has no official policy on the removal of campus fliers and maintains that there is no actual way to regulate it. Since there will be no consequences for these actions, Smith says he plans to deal with the issue himself.

“For every flyer I see torn down, I will not only replace it but I will make 10 more copies and distribute them among campus in order to further the cause of equality,” says Smith who was involved with LGBTieS last year when the club faced the same issue of unapproved flier removal.

“What good can come of silencing others?” asks Smith. “One recent attempt to lessen the campus’s exposure to equality has resulted in 10 more flyers and an article in [5,000] copies of the campus paper. There are consequences to half-assed actions, especially in a country that is built upon the true voice of dissent: the voice of the disenfranchised and outnumbered.”

Until this issue is addressed by the university, Smith hopes that other students will come to recognize the hypocrisy of their actions.

“College is a melting pot of different viewpoints, cultures, ethnicities and religions,” says Smith. “Attempts to silence an organization with a different viewpoint from your own only furthers the possibility that your voice will be silenced by those that disagree with you. We need to support one another, not tear one another down.

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