George Mason University: Unconstitutional Policies and Suppression of Dissent
GMU student and Air Force veteran Tariq Khan protested military recruiters on campus by silently standing near their table with a "Recruiters Lie" sign taped to his chest while passing out handbills. According to witnesses, a student assaulted Khan and took his sign within less than 30 minutes. Yet the police arrested Khan, not the other students involved in the ensuing fracas, allegedly because he had violated GMU Policy 1110. The ACLU of Virginia came to Khan's legal aid, and FIRE discovered that GMU maintains several unconstitutional policies limiting freedom of expression. FIRE wrote GMU President Alan G. Merten, pointing out that Policy 1110 bans on-campus distribution of newspapers that are "inconsistent with the mission of the University" and subjects all newspaper distribution on campus to prior administrative review-a clear violation of the First Amendment right to dissent. GMU responded to FIRE with a brief letter, saying that it has "launched a review of all of its policies on the use of public space" on campus and that a "faculty led committee" will recommend changes; the criminal charges against Khan were dropped. However, GMU's letter specified no deadline for the committee to make its policy changes, nor did it address FIRE's concerns about the unconstitutionality of its current policies.
Case Materials
"FIRE Challenges Unconstitutional Policies at George Mason University," FIRE Press Release, November 17, 2005: FIRE is challenging unconstitutional policies at George Mason University (GMU). Earlier this fall, such policies led to the arrest of a GMU student who was protesting military recruiters on its Northern Virginia campus.
"A new wave of PC on campus," Cathy Young, The Boston Globe, December 12, 2005: FIRE, co-founded by Boston civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate and University of Pennsylvania professor Alan Charles Kors, is a nonpartisan organization that champions free expression on college campuses. When the organization was launched in 1998, its main focus was ''political correctness" from the left -- attempts to curtail speech regarded as racist, sexist, or otherwise injurious to diversity. Such censorship still endures. But alongside it, FIRE is seeing more cases in which speech is suppressed by political correctness on the right.
"Clash of campus freedom, civility," Andrew Petkofsky, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Va.), December 11, 2005: Colleges may curb free expression inadvertently, or at least indirectly, by creating rules to govern where and when students may speak out, post handbills or hold events. But French said his organization gets even more complaints that grow from schools' overzealous efforts to protect people from harassment.
