Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The Avery Doninger case has now reached the courts, which means that it likely will be settled on legal grounds. But, as we all know, legal settlements are not always compatible with common sense. Common sense would have settled this issue long ago. Doninger is the student – now famous or infamous, depending on one’s point of view – who called the arrogant administrators in her school “douchbags,” not the politest of terms. But she had, as the lawyers might say, cause. The precipitating cause of Doninger’s outburst, in an e-mail message to her friends, was frustration; it happens to the best of us. Those details are described at considerable length, and in luminous prose, by Jon Schoenhorn in his brief on Doninger’s behalf and in a series of posts written by Andy Thibault , who maintains a site called, modestly enough, The Cool Justice Report, the nearest thing we have in the state to Nat Hentoff’s hard hitting reportage. Tibault is the natural born enemy of pomposity wherever it show...