UNM has set a dangerous precedence by allowing the recent display of billboard-sized graphic art in the public domain.
The U.S. Constitution protects speech, the press and the right to assemble, but I can't find anywhere it protects graphic art, at least art of a transient nature.
Assemblies have a way of ending, we don't have to read the newspaper and we can turn off the television, but well-placed visual images on the public concourse are difficult, if not impossible to avoid.
Museums have traditionally been the appropriate place to display provocative images; for example, Picasso's Guernica. At least then we can make the decision to subject ourselves to their influence or not.
But now that "free speech" has been redefined at UNM, it is my fear that we have opened Pandora's Box: We will now be subjected to huge visual messages from every Tom, Dick and Harry, whether we like it or not.
Charles Reuben
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Staff of School of Engineering Copy Center
