Dorm signs offend some

Pedestrians walking down Commonwealth Avenue last fall couldn’t avoid a nine-letter message from the windows of Warren Towers 14C: ‘HOT SEX NOW.’
College of General Studies sophomore Tanya Khandpur said she and her eight neighbors posted the message with one, three-foot-tall letter in each window of their dorm room. A resident assistant entered her unoccupied room and removed the ‘S,’ leaving a note behind explaining that a complaint from another RA prompted the removal.
‘We have the right to say whatever we want to say,’ Khandpur said. ‘Yeah, it was offensive and probably wrong. Maybe someone should have come in and been like, ‘Hey, this is a little offensive,’ instead of the RA coming in the room without permission.’
Issues of offensive content in students’ windows are isolated and infrequent, Office of Residence Life Director David Zamojski said.
‘We have mature students here at the university, and what I see in windows looks appropriate to me,’ Zamojski said.
When a student makes a complaint, ORL’s course of action is determined on a case-by-case basis, Zamojski said.
‘We don’t in any way regulate the content,’ he said. ‘If a message proves offensive to the community, we might talk to the student about the content.’
Before students can live on-campus, ORL requires students to sign the Residence License Agreement, which states that students must agree to BU Lifebook policies.
The Lifebook states that students may hang items on the inside of their dorm rooms. The document lists no content restrictions.
College of Arts and Sciences freshman Micah Oppenheim said he was not surprised when his RA demanded he and his roommate remove a sign asking women to expose themselves from the Warren 18B floor in late September.
His RA received an email from ORL reporting a complaint, who returned later to make sure it was gone.
‘I remember hearing at either orientation or a floor meeting, that if we had an inappropriate sign on a window, we’d have to take it down,’ Oppenheim said. ‘It was up for about three weeks.’ I’m just surprised at how long it stayed up there.’
Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore said the university only acts on student complaints.’
‘I hope campus would rather have the liveliness of discussion and debate,’ Elmore said. ‘This has to be the place where people . . . can be persuaded. We don’t want a campus devoid of messages.’
College of Communication junior Peter Brunet said he was stunned when he saw a Hezbollah flag in a Rich Hall dorm window during his freshman year.
‘The tricky part is when one person is defending their beliefs while offending someone else,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to know where those boundaries lie.’
BU School of Law professor Jay Wexler said this is not a First Amendment issue.
‘The University is a private university and the First Amendment is a limit on the government’s power to restrict individual speech,’ he said. ‘If a private individual tells someone not to speak, it’s not a First Amendment violation.’