Mind your Ps and Qs

Way back, when I was in grad school, for a year I had the responsibility of running the computer lab.  In communicating about the modifications to the lab, I wrote that I would update them again in a fortnight.

One professor found that usage of "fortnight" to be interesting.  He asked me whether I was sure that American students would know what a fortnight meant.

It was a moment of revelation that English is not English everywhere in the world.  So, when I write "mind your Ps and Qs" I have to ask myself whether the younger generation will know what that means.

Fortunately, this post is not about that meaning!

First about the P. But, P in Greek, as in Pi:

Nineteen female Dixie State University students are being forced to fight their own school for the right to use Greek letters in the name of their organization. Indigo Klabanoff and the members of Phi Beta Pi have repeatedly been denied official recognition because administrators feel that the use of Greek letters in an organization name will give Dixie State a “party school” image.
“I’ve seen a lot of campus censorship in my time, but telling students their club can’t be recognized solely because they wish to use letters from a particular alphabet is a new one to me,” said FIRE Senior Vice President Robert Shibley. “I can’t believe I actually have to say this, but as a state university, Dixie State simply does not have the power to ban or regulate the use of the Greek alphabet, the Latin alphabet, or any other system of writing.”

Seriously, this is what higher education has now come down to?  Don't administrators have better things to do?  Like raise funds for football and rock climbing walls?

A few weeks ago, I remarked to an older, retired, colleague who is a product of UC-Berkeley that colleges and universities are not anywhere near the image of free speech spaces that we think they ought to be.  Not for students, and not for faculty.  It is worse when student expression is curtailed when that is the very age when we want them to think about a great number of issues.

If that is about P, it is a very different story about Q.  Not the James Bond Q, but the letter Q.  An American university bans P(i) and Turkey legalizes Q. Go figure!

Back in 2005, a Turkish court fined 20 Kurds 100 lira (US$74) for holding up placards at a New Year's celebration containing the letters Q and W. The use of those letters—and X as well—violated the law of Nov. 1, 1928 on Adoption and Application of Turkish Letters, the purpose of which was to change the writing system of Turkish from the Arabic-based system of the Ottomans to the Roman-based system developed under the secular, modernizing regime of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

So, why was Q banned in the first place?

Now it's true that Q, W, and X aren't exactly winning popularity contests in any language, but what's so repugnant about them that a law should exist to prohibit their very existence? Well, for starters, they appear in Kurdish but not in Turkish, and restricting a minority language—Kurdish has historically been spoken by 10-25 percent of the country's population—is one way to oppress a minority.

You see, only oppressive societies, and colleges, ban the use of certain letters!

The good news is that:

After 85 years, the letters Q, W, and X have apparently been legalized as part of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's "Democratization Package" of Sept. 30, 2013.

Let us see if Pi is allowed at Dixie State.

BTW, Dixie State is in Utah?  Not in the South?  That is a much bigger problem than the use of the Greek P!