Ban on Porn Is Proposed at University

An engineering professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo has launched a campaign to ban the use of school computers to view pornography, igniting debate over the limits of academic freedom.

Linda Vanasupa, chairwoman of the materials engineering department, plans to introduce a resolution in April before the academic senate to impose the ban.

The proposal -- known as the “Resolution to Enhance Civility and Promote a Diversity-Friendly Campus Climate” -- also would prohibit using the university’s computer technology to gain access to hate literature.

Vanasupa, who joined the faculty 12 years ago, said her effort began after a university employee complained to her that she was unwillingly exposed to pornography downloaded onto a computer that she shared at work.

After receiving the complaint, Vanasupa said she asked campus administrators to crack down on online pornography in the workplace. But Vanasupa said she was told that the practice could not be banned without intruding on academic freedom and 1st Amendment protections.

Vanasupa counters that her resolution “is specifically to prevent personal sexual entertainment in the workplace,” and would simply bring campus policy into line with anti-harassment legal standards for the workplace. She said it would limit only “a very small aspect of our access” to the Internet, and would not restrict use of computers for professional purposes.

In addition, she noted that the resolution provides that “faculty and staff who need to access hate literature, obscenity or pornography for bona fide work purposes” can petition the university for a waiver.

“It’s easy to submit a request,” she said. “How long does it take to write a memo?”

Carlos Cordova, the university’s legal counsel, replied that viewing pornography at work “is stupid and wrong activity. We all agree with that.”

But he said state and university policies already in place are adequate to deal with the problem without running afoul of 1st Amendment or academic freedom concerns. He cited the campus’ anti-sexual harassment policy, along with state and university policies barring excessive use of computers for personal purposes.

Cordova cited the experience of many universities in the early 1990s that enacted codes barring hate speech, only to see them struck down by the courts on 1st Amendment grounds.

“We’re attempting to balance issues of 1st Amendment, sexual harassment law, academic freedom, appropriate use of public resources, and obviously these are sometimes competing interests,” Cordova said. “Our current policy attempts to balance those competing interests.”

In a statement sent Thursday to university employees and reporters, university Provost Paul J. Zingg added that a ban such as the one proposed by Vanasupa would be “difficult to enforce in practice, legally vague and runs the risk of limiting and frustrating legitimate academic inquiry.”

If Cal Poly adopts the resolution, however, it would not be the only school to impose an anti-pornography ban. San Diego State adopted a “computing acceptable use policy” three years ago that bars “the use of computer equipment for the transmission of threats, harassment, defamation, obscenity and pornography.”

A spokeswoman for the American Assn. of University Professors said her organization would likely frown on any policy that attempted broad restrictions on research topics, rather than disciplining individuals involved in unacceptable behavior.

“A before-the-fact blanket ban on researching any topic is too much of a restriction on academic freedom and free speech,” said Ann Springer, an associate counsel with the group, the nation’s largest organization of university professors.

Rather than attempting such restrictions, Springer said she would advise campuses to have strong policies addressing sexual harassment issues, as well as computer-use policies that remind faculty, staff and students that university-owned computers are to be used for scholarship. “Then, when and if you have a problem, you deal with the problem,” she said.