Want to see at art exhibit? At a public university?
You’ll need to sign a waiver.
It’s a report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression that has confirmed the art is “controversial.”
It’s because, the report explains, featured are “prominent conservative politicians alongside swastikas, Nazis, anti-Semitic slogans, and the infamous white hoods worn by the Ku Klux Klan.”
FIRE notes that art often is controversial – “Every great work of art is offensive to someone” – and it is working with the National Coalition Against Censorship to deliver to Eastern Tennessee State University a statement that the waiver signature requirement “places a real burden on the public’s ability to anonymously enjoy art.”
“In turn, this threatens to turn away potential viewers who may otherwise want to engage with protected works of art. Given the controversy over this exhibit, people who prefer not to alert bureaucrats to their personal activities are not going to put their names down on a list of attendees — and certainly not with lawmakers, ETSU officials, and the public up in arms about the exhibit,” the organization explained.
The annual exhibit honors Fletcher Dyer, who was a graphic design student at ETSU when he died during his senior year in a 2009 motorcycle crash.
He once said, “I dream of making a difference in some way with my art. I might attempt to right political, social, and religious wrongs by showing the rest of society a glimpse of how I feel about serious issues in the world.”
Since his death, the school has sponsored the FL3TCH3R Exhibit in his honor.
This year’s product, with its various ingredients, “has drawn ire from elected officials and the public,” FIRE reported.
ETSU President Brian Noland has refused to drop the exhibit events, but also has refused to leave it barrier-free, with the waiver signature requirement.
That apparently, along with warning signs, is to alert attendees about ideas they may find offensive.
But, FIRE reported, that mindset, is just like the “trigger warnings of the 2010s,” a mindset that indoctrinates that people “must be protected from difficult ideas.”
ETSU explains it is not the university’s duty to “attempt to shield individuals from free speech,” including those ideas that can be “offensive, unwise, immoral, indecent, disagreeable, conservative, liberal, traditional, radical, or wrong-headed.”
FIRE is asking that the school remove the “onerous waiver requirement.”
