It is irrelevant whether the message in question violates acceptable network policy (or rather, it would only make the poster's case worse if it did). The list you are running is a subset of the private computing resources of your (or some other) university which said university has not agreed to make available through any generic agreement with CREN, EARN, or whatever. That is, unlike the forwarding of RSCS files which is a sine qua non condition for joining CREN, it is up to your university to decide whether to make these resources available to the list at all and how they should be used in the best interest of the university. You have been appointed list owner by the staff of said university and it is thus your responsibility to decide whether a particular category of messages is appropriate for the list. If the subscribers do not like it, they are free to leave, or to use "better" forums such as usenet to argue about the relationship between the first amendment and electronic forums. Personally, if I had been accused of racism after reminding a subscriber that one of his postings violated the guidelines for my list, I would consider sending a copy of the whole exchange to his system administrator (depending on how it happened). Some people are apparently out here for the sole purpose of disrupting mailing lists which used to work just fine, and there is no reason to put up with them. Eric