Censorship Hard At Work

School principle Thomas Murray of Danvers High School has made the Boston Globe by a recent move. He has banned the word 'meep' from his school. For those who have never heard of the word meep, it was coined by Beaker, one of Jim Henson's muppets and a character on sesame street. The word isn't even in the dictionary, which all adds up to a very confusing and hilarious puzzle. Why did Principle Murray feel that he had the right/need to ban this word from his school?
According to Murray the students were using the word in a disruptive way. The word was apparently given context similar to that of an obscenity. To be fair to Murray it is easy to see how certain students could have been using the word as an obscenity, but all in all this seems rather ridiculous.
The very fact that Murray had to ban a word represents a failure on his part as an administrator. What is to stop students from appropriating commonly used words like food or class? To a large extent the ban simply serves to help the students being disruptive - the word is now truly taboo, not simply a humorous utterance.
In the end, is it just to ban a word? It seems obvious that obscenities may deserve censorship. If a word is said only to provoke or express hatred or a threat then it can be filed under hate speech. However, hate speech is not illegal in the US. So why did the principle have the right to restrict the speech at his school? It seems that words are only as strong as their contexts, and hate speech is only as strong as its reception. If one does not care what another says, then that hate speech has lost its strength. Any action taken against hate speech often serves to strengthen it, and this is what have seen at Danvers School.


http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/12/13/meep/