Respect Speech, Don't Just Protect Its Freedom

There's a lesson to be learned about J. David McSwane's disastrous editorial that appeared in the Colorado State University student newspaper. It has nothing to do with free speech, or the controversy surrounding the "F*ck Bush, Taser That" line that garnered national attention.
McSwane will graduate soon and carry some lesson learned that will hopefully help him later on in his career. That's what college newspapers are supposed to do: Throw you into the fire and see if you can figure out a way to escape without burns deep enough to make folks cringe when they look your way.
There's an advisor to tell you what you did right and wrong. After you go to press. This means 21-year-old students are going to make mistakes, some more long lasting than others, and they are going to wind up in newsprint.
I can relate, although I never made national headlines with anything I ever let slip into print as the managing editor the University of Colorado newspaper.
I just left scars in the minds of a handful of young women dealing with the loss of their friend. Scars that still have a few of them loathing me nearly six years later.
One of their friends, a popular sorority girl, was mowed down by a speeding car at 2:30 a.m. one weekend night. She died that night. The girl driving the car was a stripper. She fled the scene, only to turn herself in the next day.
The headlines and stories following said Terrible Stripper Kills Innocent Sorority Girl. Or something to that effect.
Our staff decided that wasn't the case. That the stripper shouldn't be tried in the court of public opinion before the facts came out. I still agree with that argument to this day.
But I didn't know how to write well then. And my prose was far from elegant. My column read like I was defending the stripper (who, by the way, never served jail time).
I received a hate filled letter from virtually every girl in that sorority.
Bottom line, my point was lost and all I did was hurt feelings.
My close friend who has known me since that day is currently seeing the best friend of the girl killed that day on The Hill in Boulder. She witnessed the death. My words did nothing but open the wound further. She barely can look me in the face now.
Words are a powerful thing, and it took me writing a devastating column in a school newspaper to realize that.
J. David McSwane learned how powerful the written word is, too. So hopefully he now understands how respecting speech is just as important as protecting the freedom of it.