Marquette Dental School blogger punishment reduced

Marquette Dental School Dean William Lobb has reduced the punishment of the student blogger who made unkind remarks about an unnamed professor and some unnamed fellow students on his blog.

Associate Professor of Political Science, John McAdam, at his Marquette Warrior Blog, rightfully says reducing the draconian punishment of a two semester suspension from school, the loss of a scholarship, and counseling to three semesters of probation, 100 hours of community service, and a public apology to his class was not a enough. The Marquette Dental School student’s punishment is still too harsh.

The most that the Dental School should have done is for some administrator to take the student aside and say “off the record, don’t you think those posts were a bit ill-advised? Don’t you think that maybe you should take them offline?” The least the school could have done was to entirely blow off something that was, in reality, pretty trivial.

However, so far as this student is concerned, the issue now appears closed. He can get on with his life, and a professional career in dentistry.

McAdam also made clear that student blogs such as Eminent Domain in the Law School and Agrestic in the Business School are not intimidated by any threats of University action. “It seems that something particularly perverse in the administrative culture of the Dental School was at fault.”

Dean Laub presumably has no clue how bad he makes the dental school look. Any prospective dental student is going to Google Marquette Dental School. They’ll find a third of the search results are about this stupid supression of free speech on a college campus.