I still have a vivid image of Dave’s wonderful illustration for that issue.

Just a few small corrections:

The DRB was the last stage in the disciplinary process at Brown (save for, I believe, an appeal to the president). Students only came before it if the offense with which they were charged could possibly lead to a punishment of suspension or greater. There were preliminary procedures that were run entirely by the Dean of Student’s office. While I was on the DRB, starting the second semester of our freshman year, we never heard any cases involving censorship of printed materials. Kamp, et al. would have gone in front of the deans but definitely did not make it to the DRB (same with Neusner’s complaint).

That being said, the DRB did suspend a student for using the word “nigger,” though I was not involved in the case. As the student had lived on the same floor as my girlfriend, he thought I would be biased against him and asked that I recluse myself. Ironically enough, though said student was a drunk, violent, moronic asshole, I would have voted to give him no punishment at all in this particular case.

Also, Inman was not actually on the DRB, but rather brought the cases against the students to it (as, essentially, prosecutor). One of my fondest memories of that time remains watching him down an entire bottle of cough syrup during a long hearing. Pretty hammered at the end.

I will say in defense of the DRB that it had much less of a direct role in the campus insanity than you imply. We did not actually write the disciplinary code, but only enforced it. There was indeed a student who was punished for having sex with a woman who was passed out part of the time, but this was a violation of both Brown’s code and Rhode Island state law. Even so, it was such a problematic case in terms of evidence (with a far from unanimous vote) that the DRB basically decided we simply weren’t equipped to hear sexual assault cases (though I believe this changed some years after we graduated, with predictably unfortunate results). In fact, the DRB came under a great deal of criticism from campus activists for its reticence to get involved in such matters. It WAS a huge mistake for them to suspend the racist student, but it was fully in accord with Brown’s deeply flawed disciplinary code. I personally think that they should have simply ignored the code in that case, but again, it was not of their creation. I think you may be conflating the DRB and the overall disciplinary apparatus plus the student government. As a whole, they much deserved any ridicule we heaped on them.

And let’s not forget that the greatest press coverage at Brown while we were there was about the “rapist lists” appearing on the walls of women’s bathrooms, with which the DRB obviously had no involvement. Most of what we did was punish drunked frat boys (95% of the students who came in front of the board) for smashing college (and student) property and getting in fights.

But let us not distract from the main point, the overall disciplinary structure, and especially the parts run by the administration and the cops, was a joke. I wipe my ass of them all!