John Silber’s Students Should Not Be Above the Law- Article Critique

John Silber’s Students should not be above the Law- Article critique

Chancellor John Silber philosopher, educator and controversial president of Boston University from 1971 to 1996, was an internationally recognized authority on ethics, education, and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. On his controversial article written to the New York Times, Students should not be above the Law, he claims how universities and colleges will not risk their reputation and prestige for the misdemeanors and crimes that their students commit and how they give them the benefit of the clergy just like medieval Europe. Just because they are students they are not taken to federal courts, instead they are only punished by the, “campus disciplinary proceedings”. They advise students that instead on denouncing crimes to the corresponding authorities they should only trust the campus courts decisions and punishments. By doing so, universities are crippling students in a way that are not ready to face the real world courts, where crimes are not punished with an expulsion, but with the enormous severity of the real world.

John Silber denounces in his article how many colleges and universities in using their own judicial system to punish crimes such as rape and assault committed on their campus is very much like it was in medieval Europe when there were “two parallel court systems: the church’s and the king’s” (Silber 1). The ability to use the church’s judicial system was more desirable, than the king’s, because they did not refer to capital punishment, over that of the king’s was based on upon the accused ability to read. By only memorizing a verse from the bible the felon assured him what was known as the “benefit of the Clergy” (Silber 1). What Silber is pointing out is that one may wonder if the society if still progressing or regressing. Why should students be exempt from the same punishments that non students have to face, if so, what happens when they are released into the “real world” and they commit a crime? Are they going to be prosecuted like everyone else or are they thinking that they are still going to have “benefit of Clergy?” (Silber 1) Silber is extremely persuasive on his claims, because he in fact was the president of a prestigious university, and he is denouncing the wrong-doing of universities and colleges. The claims that he makes lead to a very serious issue to be discussed by the judicial courts of our government,