THEY SHOULD BE FORBIDDEN TO REPRESENT ANYONE BEYOND THEMSELVES.

language, turns speech into a potential disciplinary “offence” and makes campus authorities into censors. Does a university that has just launched a “First Amendment Institute” really want to say, “You can’t espouse unsafe views?” As Charles C.W. Cooke of the National Review has observed, “there are no objective means by which we might judge what is ‘safe’ to say and what is not ... everybody has a heckler’s veto simply by virtue of their capacity to feel.”

But what Columbia University can and should say is, “We don’t want anyone who espouses such views representing us.” That’s a distinction that makes sense.

The wrestlers surrendered their right to say anything they wanted when they put on their branded athletic gear, funded by university fees and gifts, and walked out into public arenas as supposed examples of Columbia’s virtues. They exchanged privacy for privilege, a stage, free training, and the assumptions they hoped people would make about their character and values as a result of the fact that they wore Columbia on their shirts. Especially at hiring time. Then they got together in their insular little mob and abused all of those advantages with their I’m-so-elite-rules-of-civility-don’tapply-to-me arrogance.

The claim that their text messaging should be protected by privacy is a fast-twitch response — and it falls flat as soon as the lights are turned on and the roaches scurry. If you hold thoughts or ideas that you don’t want to be seen widely, then don’t type them. And don’t put them out on an electronic device. Did they learn nothing from Hillary Clinton? Who doesn’t know that? Only, apparently, Columbia and Harvard boys steeped in their insular dumbfoolery.

So spare us any concerned conversations about how their texts became public. They wrote them and pressed “send.” Now they can deal with the real-world problems of unwanted publicity, and try to explain to their prospective employers why they’re not risky hires who would abuse their computer access and get the company sued for harassment.

Looking at it that way, the appropriate consequences should be clear. The guilty wrestlers should be forbidden to represent anyone beyond themselves. They shouldn’t be allowed to plunge an entire campus into a dicey disciplinary action that uses their foul mouths to jeopardize the free speech of all.

They should simply and flatly be kicked off a team that exists by virtue of the financial support of others, and out of any other organizations that might be funded, too. They should be rendered individuals, who — now that they have been outed, humiliated and disgraced by their own words — have to continue to walk around that campus exposed for who they really are.