Stanton writes a letter to President of St. John's

November 13, 1997

Rev. Donald J. Harrington, C.M.
President, St. John’s University
8000 Utopia Pkwy.
Jamaica, NY 11439

Dear Reverend Harrington:

I am writing about a recent incident of censorship and persecution that occurred under the name of your University, through its Internet listserver.

The owners of the list CD administered from your listserver, Jeffrey Schaler and Martin Smith, expelled Robin Room (formerly V.P. of research at the Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario), Robert Ryley (a college student at another University), and myself. The expulsion notice read as in part as follows:

The decision is non-negotiable. The official list policy of St. John's University is that all decisions regarding list management are the sole responsibility of the listowners.

Note: Complaints regarding this or any list made to the listmaster at St. John's University can result in your removal from any and all lists at St. John's and prevention from further subscription to St. John's lists. This is also official St. John's University list policy.

Note that this banishment includes a threat that any appeal to St. John’s will result in further repercussions against the banished. It indicates that by writing this letter to you, St. John’s will ban me from any Internet lists it administers.

I enclose a representation of some of this affair at my website at the following URL:

http://www.drugtext.org/peele/debate/cd.html

At this place, you can also find commands to retrieve the entire discussion on the CD list leading up to the banishment. Subsequently, at least one member of the list, Tomec Smith, complained about our banishment and was himself banished.

It strikes me that an educational institution needs to be concerned about issues of censorship and persecution which take place under its aegis, even in the remote form of its listserver. I invite you to investigate this matter to reach your own conclusions.

Sincerely yours,
Stanton Peele, Ph.D., J.D.