Havelock Scoop

Tomorrow evening, the curtain will rise on a modern drama written, directed and acted entirely by Craven Community College students.

The premiere performance of “Love Eternal,” written and directed by Charlotte Bird, will begin at 7 p.m. Thursday in Orringer Auditorium on the college’s New Bern campus. An encore is scheduled for Saturday evening. For information about the play, visit its MySpace page here.

Support the future of local theatre in Craven County and come out to see this student-produced performance! I’ll see you in the crowd.

An overreaching harassment policy at Fayetteville State University has been named January’s Speech Code of the Month by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Perhaps well-intentioned, but certainly misguided, Fayetteville State’s Code of Student Conduct bans “verbal or physical behavior that stigmatizes or victimizes an individual on the basis of race.”

As a public university, FSU is an arm of the state and, as such, bound by the United States Constitution and its First Amendment. While state agencies can’t commit racial discrimination, neither can they enforce mandatory political correctness and silence adult citizens who don’t share mainstream society’s perspectives.

FIRE points out that the wording in Fayetteville State’s policy is identical to language in a University of Michigan policy that was declared unconstitutional in 1989. Also good reading: FIRE’s 2006 Speech Codes of the Year.