Suppression of First Amendment Rights on College Campuses

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education the Situation is a "National Scandal"

I hate to sound like the old man on Saturday Night Live as played by Dana Carvey who used to exclaim "that's the way it was and we liked it!" However, I can remember when college campuses led the way when it came to free speech and First Amendment issues. Now, just as I suspected, the opposite is true.

According to the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, based in Philadelphia, suppression of First Amendment rights at our countries' colleges and universities is a "national scandal." 229 schools were given a "red light" ranking, the lowest possible mark, in a report "Spotlight on Speech Codes 2006: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation's Campuses." Red light institutions have at least one policy that "clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech" according to the report.

The group analyzed policies at 334 schools in 2005 and 2006 and concluded that "an overwhelming majority prohibit speech that outside the campus is protected by the First Amendment." Speech code policies governing expression were first enacted in the 1980's. However, the U.S. Supreme Court makes few exceptions to the First Amendment such as what the report calls "speech that incites reasonable people to violence, libel and actual harassment." The Court has defined harassment as "so severe, pervasive and objecttively offensive that it effectively bars the victim's access to an educational opportunity or benefit."

My home state school, the University of Arkansas, has long been considered a bastion of "political correctness." Indeed the U of A is on the list. The powers that be at the University quickly defended their policies, along with the President of the Associated Student Governent, issuing a blurb about how the University is committed to freedom of speech. Hogwash! They aren't and haven't been for years. In all my travels, I have yet to see a school in lockstep with the PC crowd as much as the U of A.