Be careful what word you use to complete the title if you live in New South Wales, because the State’s Police Commissioner wants the Director of Public Prosecution to re-open an offensive language case against a university student which was dismissed by a magistrate in the Waverley Local Court.
Whilst nobody particularly likes being called the word in question, there is an important issue which is being overlooked by the Police Commissioner, the Daily Telegraph (predictably) and NSW Premier Kristina Kenneally (depressingly but also predictably). This is whether, even if one agrees that the word in question is offensive, it is right and just that a young man should be lumbered with a criminal conviction for uttering it in what was no doubt a stressful situation, and good public policy for police resources and court time to be used in pursuit of such a conviction.
Let’s imagine, by way of comparison, that one of Mr. Grech’s fellow students called a tutor or lecturer the word in question during an overheated discussion about a disappointing essay mark. It is inconceivable to me that an academic would want to involve the police or the courts rather than dealing with the matter within the university, and in a majority of cases without even taking the matter as far as the formal misconduct processes. If it happened to me, in the first instance I’d simply adjourn the discussion, remind the student that s/he wasn’t going to make progress with her complaint about the mark by using language like that, and ask her/him to come back to continue the discussion when s/he was in a better frame of mind. There would need to be at least a second such incident involving the same student before I would consider taking the matter further.
Whatever happened to the exercise of professional discretion and people skills by the NSW Police Service?