“Kansas State University suspended its women’s soccer coach for two weeks after she used the n-word, while explaining to athletes why they should only play clean music during games,” reports The College Fix.
“According to sources with knowledge of the situation, [Colleen] Corbin had asked players not to play pregame music that included some swear words, including the N-word, before K-State’s exhibition versus Arkansas on March 7, in Kansas City,” The Mercury reported on March 31. “In a conversation about the music, she reportedly said the N-word, and players complained to the university.”
The coach reportedly “used the word again when relaying the situation during a staff meeting, which led assistant coach and goalkeepers coach Maddie Dobyns…to resign from the team.”
Although a left-wing lawyer — Stephen Yagman — once claimed that use of the N word is forbidden by the Supreme Court (he made this claim in an article he published in the California Daily Journal), that’s not the case. Indeed, judges themselves use racial slurs like the N word in full in their opinions, to discuss things like supervisors racially harassing their subordinates using the N word, or prosecutors quoting someone else’s use of the word. Courts themselves use the N word in full in their rulings, such as Savage v. Maryland (2018). That federal appeals court ruling dismissed a racial harassment lawsuit by a black police officer, alleging that a prosecutor unnecessarily read “aloud, at a trial preparation meeting, potential evidence in the form of letters containing racial epithets.” The court’s ruling contains “n****r” and the slang “n***a” without any redactions or deleted letters
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has noted that court opinions (including federal appellate courts) often quote racial slurs directly, rather than substituting them with euphemisms. Volokh contends that when teaching cases involving harassment or racism, quoting the full word is necessary to accurately report the facts and understand the legal principles involved. Volokh discusses this in “The New Taboo: Quoting Epithets in the Classroom and Beyond.”
But Kansas State University suspended Corbin on March 23. The athletics department said an official investigation has been launched into the situation. “Coach Colleen Corbin was suspended for two weeks following offensive lyrics played during warm-ups before a spring match,” it told The Mercury. “While addressing the issue, the coach inappropriately repeated the offensive lyrics,” it stated. “The incident was reported to the University’s Civil Rights and Title IX office, and K-State Athletics took action, issuing a suspension. Athletics takes these matters seriously and expects coaches and players to respect others.”
In 1995, a federal appeals court ruled that a university could discipline a coach for using the N word it if wanted to, even if the coach didn’t have racist intent, because the coach’s speech using the N word wasn’t related to teaching or a matter of public concern. It issued that ruling in Dambrot v. Central Michigan University (1995). But the court also ruled that students who sued along with their coach had their free-speech rights violated by being subject to a racial harassment code that could punish even isolated use of the N word regardless of the students’ intentions (students, unlike coaches, have free speech, even when their speech is not about a matter of public concern).
And in 2001, that same court ruled that the First Amendment protected a professor who used the N word in class to describe how it was used to degrade black people, because that use of the N word was speech on a matter of public concern. That ruling was issued in Hardy v. Jefferson Community College (2001).
So professors sometimes have a First Amendment to use the N word in class.
As The College Fix notes,
Corbin has a long coaching record, coming to Kansas State from Saint Louis University, according to her university bio.
Prior to that, she coached the professional San Diego Wave team and at other universities including James Madison University and Arizona State University….
A student also reported a Clemson University professor to the school’s bias team for also using the n-word three times, once with an “a” at the end. Like Corbin, the professor used the word to explain to students why they should not say it.
“Even though he was using the word in telling students it was inappropriate to use it, the professor was then reported to the administration by the student,” The Fix reported in 2020.
