The liberty principle for this
Freedom Friday is the simple fact that the freedom of speech on college
campuses is threatened in America. This is so even though its protection is
guaranteed under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It seems that educational
institutions do not understand that their campuses must have freedom of speech
in order for education to be more complete for each student. It also seems that
each incident must be fought in court.
Kevin Shaw, age 27, is a student at Pierce College, and was barred from passing out free Spanish copies of the U.S. Constitution.
It seems that he was not in the designated “free speech zone” on campus when he
did so. He felt that he had a right to pass them out on campus and sought
assistance from The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). A law
suit was filed in March 2017 against the Los Angeles Community College District
(LACCD) that represents nine schools including Pierce College. A federal
district court in January 2018 denied a request from the District and Pierce
College to dismiss the lawsuit. The court found that “the open spaces of public
colleges are traditional public forums for student speech regardless of
regulations.” LACCD agreed to settle the lawsuit this week. As part of their
agreement, they agreed to revoke “a district-wide policy that declared all
property on the district’s nine campuses to be `non-public forums’ with speech
restrictions” and to pay $225,000 for Shaw’s attorney fees. Shaw was supported
by “Folks of all political dispositions” who came together to declare the “freedom
of speech is essential to the educational process.”
It appears that LACCD is not the only college district or campus to declare that freedom of speech does not
apply on their campuses. An article dated December 11, 2018, begins with this
statement: “The vast majority of students at America’s top colleges and
universities surrender their free speech rights the moment they step onto
campus, according to a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in
Education” (FIRE).
Released today, Spotlight on Speech
Codes 2019: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses analyzes the
written policies at 466 of America’s top colleges and universities for their
protection of free speech. The report finds that 89.7 percent of American
colleges maintain policies that restrict – or too easily could restrict –
student and faculty expression. All of the analyzed policies are accessible in
FIRE’s Spotlight Database. FIRE rates schools as “red light,” “yellow light,”
or “green light” based on how much, if any, speech protected by the First
Amendment their policies restrict.
“Most colleges impose burdensome
conditions on expression by maintaining policies that restrict students’ free
speech rights,” said FIRE Senior Program Officer Laura Beltz, lead author of
the study. “Colleges should be a place for open debate and intellectual
inquiry, but today, almost all colleges silence expression through policies
that are often illiberal and, at public institutions, unconstitutional.”
More than a quarter of institutions in
the report (28.5 percent) received FIRE’s poorest, red light rating for
maintaining speech codes that both “clearly and substantially” restrict freedom
of speech.
Seeing that Alaska was considered “red”
I discovered that the University of Alaska Anchorage and the University of
Alaska Fairbanks are both considered to fall under the “red” label. I was
curious about my home state and discovered that Utah State University and Utah
Valley University are also considered to be “red.”
More than 800,000 students attend
institutions that have “free speech zones,” and 90 percent of public colleges
maintain them. However, the number of private colleges who have “free speech
zones” has dropped below 50 percent of “Red Light” ratings. Maybe it will take
more students like Kevin Shaw fighting for freedom of speech for institutions
to move into the real world of the United States.
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