How Campus Censors Squelch Freedom of Speech
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Newsletter of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education QUARTERLY THE Volume 1 Number 2 Fall 2003 Victory: Speech Code Falls at Inside Citrus College FIRE’s Third Speech IRE has scored its first victory in the nation- Code Target: Texas wide campaign to bring legal challenges Tech University 3 against speech codes in public higher F education. Due to litigation facilitated by FIRE, in less than three weeks California’s Citrus “How Campus Censors College revoked policies that unconstitutionally Squelch Freedom restricted its students’ free speech rights. of Speech” by Stuart Taylor Jr. The lawsuit was filed on May 20 by FIRE Legal Citrus College Plaintiff, Chris Stevens from National Journal 4 Network attorney Carol A. Sobel on behalf of student Chris Stevens. It challenged two policies at Citrus College, FIRE has helped to bring a that quarantined free speech to three small and lawsuit against Texas Tech University—which is FIRE 2003 remote parts of campus. Speakers could be featured on page 3—and is planning lawsuits at Internship Program 6 suspended, expelled, or even arrested for express- other universities. We are saddened by litigation, ing themselves outside of these areas. Students but the First Amendment is non-negotiable. FIRE’s Legal Network 9 were required to notify the college not only of Liberty is precious. Details on FIRE’s litigation their intent to use the “free speech areas” but campaign can be seen on our website. Censorship Zone also of their intended message. No sound amplifi- cation whatsoever was allowed. Lastly, the areas Ends at Western could only be used on weekdays from 8 a.m. to Illinois University 9 6 p.m.—even though more than a third of students take classes between 4 and 10 p.m. From the Board of Directors 10 On June 5, just 16 days after FIRE’s campaign began, the Citrus College Board of Trustees unanimously adopted a resolution revoking the policies. The Board also revoked another policy Foundation for Individual that, though not a part of this specific lawsuit, had Rights in Education, Inc. been publicly identified by FIRE as a target for legal 210 West Washington Square challenge. That policy had outlawed “offensive... Suite 303 expression or language.” Philadelphia, PA 19106 The lawsuit against Citrus College was the second Tel: 215-717-3473 such lawsuit initiated by FIRE. In April, FIRE Fax: 215-717-3440 launched its litigation campaign with a lawsuit against Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania Visit us online: (Shippensburg’s speech code was featured in the www.thefire.org last issue of The FIRE Quarterly). Since the victory www.thefireguides.org From the President t is extraordinary being the president of FIRE, and although I do it pro bono, the rewards are deeply satisfying. I come in several days a week to an office that overflows with the intelligence, energy, ideals, warm humor, and moral will of its underpaid and overworked staff. On any given day, volunteers and I interns work with dedication on the stuff of freedom on our campuses. How remarkable that there is this place–210 West Washington Square, Suite 303, in Philadelphia (come visit)—where everyone believes in individual rights, individual responsibility, legal equality, dignity, fairness, and the boundless prospects of human liberty. What a privilege. One exchanges one’s time and labor for something one wants in return. I am well rewarded for what I give to FIRE. In addition, there are the confrontations with the ideological and careerist bullies against whom FIRE fights... the victories, and the ongoing struggles. They both exhaust and energize me. The exhaustion passes. The energy remains and grows. Stay with FIRE in all this. We will win in lots of essential ways—changing the debate about our campuses; letting those in the next generation who cherish liberty know that they are not alone; freeing those students from insufferable tyrannies; sweeping away what seemed enduring speech Alan Charles Kors codes; educating students about freedom and responsibility—and who knows, we may win it all in the end. What matters profoundly is never to let fatalism triumph over the dignity of individual rights, above all on campuses where the next generation of citizens is being formed. Finally, there is the immeasurable joy of hearing from and getting to know so many of you, FIRE’s friends, supporters, and donors. Every day, amid the spam and my own university’s bureaucratic memoranda, there are the emails from you… encouragement, advice, honest opinion, and the kinship of those who care about the rights of a free people in a free society. You include truck drivers and nobel laureates, academics and entrepreneurs, homemakers and executives, students and parents. You make it possible. You add to the joy of doing what I do. Stay in touch. Come visit. Keep supporting FIRE. Liberty is a precious thing, and its defense is a truly thrilling enterprise. Alan Charles Kors Quarterly Web Traffic 2000-2003: www.thefire.org 80,000 70,000 60,000 50,000 40,000 30,000 Number of Visits 20,000 10,000 Q1 ‘00 Q2 ‘00 Q3 ‘00 Q4 ‘00 Q1 ‘01 Q2 ‘01 Q3 ‘01 Q4 ‘01 Q1 ‘02 Q2 ‘02 Q3 ‘02 Q4 ‘02 Q1 ‘03 Q2 ‘03 Q3 ‘03 2 The FIRE Quarterly FIRE’s Third Speech Code Target: Texas Tech University “Free Speech Gazebo” at Texas Tech. A public university of 28,000 grants its students 280 square feet of freedom. Greg Lukianoff, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy, was a guest on MSNBC’s Buchanan & Press on June 2 and Scarborough Country on June 6 to discuss FIRE’s efforts at Texas Tech. IRE is coordinating a lawsuit against a speech code at Texas Tech University—the third such F lawsuit in a national campaign to eliminate speech codes at public universities. The suit was filed on behalf of a conscientious Christian law student by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a Phoenix-based nonprofit organization devoted to protecting religious liberty. Jordan Lorence, an attorney with ADF, and Kelly Shackelford, an attorney with the Texas-based Liberty Legal Institute, are assisting in the litigation. Lorence and Shackelford are both members of FIRE’s Legal Network. Texas Tech bans “communications [that] humiliate any person,” giving as examples of such punishable expres- sion “sexual innuendoes,” “referring to days in advance, which means, of course, an adult as ‘girl,’ ‘boy,’ or ‘honey,’” or that they cannot respond in a timely and “sexual stories.” In addition, this spontaneous manner to local, national, university of 28,000 quarantines free or global events. expression to one small gazebo, approxi- mately twenty feet in diameter. Students “Students deserve more than 280 must have official approval to engage in square feet of freedom: one square protests, demonstrations, pamphleteer- foot per 100 individuals,” said FIRE Co- ing, or even the distribution of director Harvey A. Silverglate. “Texas Students at Texas Tech wear newspapers outside of the “free speech Tech’s policies show contempt for the these buttons to protest the gazebo.” Students must ask for official Bill of Rights and, in particular, for the speech restrictions. approval for these activities at least six First Amendment.” Fall 2003 3 How Campus Censors Squelch Freedom of Speech By Stuart Taylor Jr. This episode provides a window into the But in fact, campus censorship lives on, politically correct censorship that pol- often justified under the guise of teve Hinkle, a student at lutes so many of our nation’s campuses. enforcing vague rules against racial or California Polytechnic State For seeking peacefully and politely to sexual “harassment.” Administrators University, was posting fliers exercise his First Amendment rights, typically interpret these rules to encom- Saround campus last November Hinkle was subjected to a seven-hour pass any speech that offends nonwhite 12 that advertised a speech to be given disciplinary hearing, from which his students or insults the left-liberal-radical- the next evening. The fliers contained a lawyer was barred. He was found guilty feminist-postmodernist orthodoxies of photo of the speaker, black conservative of “disruption” of the “meeting.” And the academic class. The rules are typi- Mason Weaver, and the words “It’s OK he was ordered to apologize to the cally enforced by campus kangaroo to Leave the Plantation,” the name of a offended students, in writing, or face courts with no semblance of fairness. book in which Weaver likens African- much stiffer penalties, possibly including American dependence on government expulsion. All of this is to go on Hinkle’s Here are some representative examples programs to slavery. permanent record, perhaps hurting his of rules that appear to be current as far chances of getting into graduate school. as FIRE could tell from checking When Hinkle approached a public bul- university Web sites: Georgetown warns letin board in the lounge of the campus The bottom line is that like many other against “expression” that is “inappropri- Multicultural Center, some African- campuses, “Cal Poly gives some people ate” and that severely offends others on American students who were sharing the power to veto what others have to matters of “race, ethnicity, religion, gen- pizzas nearby objected. They told say,” says Thor L. Halvorssen, the head der, or sexual preference.” (Would that Hinkle not to post the flier because they of the Foundation for Individual Rights include quoting Justice Antonin Scalia’s found it “offensive” and “disrespectful.” in Education (FIRE), a nonpartisan, acerbic dissent from the June 26 By all accounts, his response was Philadelphia-based free speech group Supreme Court decision upholding gay something like, “How do you know it’s that has come to Hinkle’s defense.