"The Office of Residence Life, within its offices and its residence halls, will become a place where diversity among people is recognized, valued and demonstrated. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism and other behaviors and systems that empower some while oppressing others will not be tolerated. Programs, policies, and procedures will reflect the importance and acceptance of diversity. Actions that encourage and promote diversity will be valued and rewarded."
(From "The Creation of a Housing and Residence Life Program Which Recognizes, Values, and Demonstrates Diversity", University of Delaware Office of Housing and Residence Life, June 1991)
Google recorded a copy of this page as recently as April 6, 2008.
It's hard to keep up with ResLife's revisions. FIRE doesn't have its own copy of the original page—who would have thought that ResLife would disavow a statement that has been in effect for 17 years?
A lot of additional changes to the ResLife website can only be expected, even under the re-revised proposal. For instance, in the new proposal, ResLife is now disavowing the language of citizenship responsibilities at a "global level," but the Resident Assistant Job Description under which RAs are being hired still demands that RAs "Be willing to encourage residents to act as positive community members and global citizens."
Once again, the changes reflected in the latest ResLife proposal are far, far from enough.
FIRE loves when students beautifully express the principles of individual rights. We recently saw a copy of a great letter that University of Delaware student Alyssa Koser, a self-described "progressive democrat and environmentalist," sent to the officers of Students for the Environment (S4E). She eloquently expresses the difference between supporting an agenda and foisting it on others. As a student in the dorms for a number of years, Alyssa knows very well what ResLife has been doing to indoctrinate students, and she wants it to stop—even though she believes largely in ResLife's social and political agenda. Here's her letter, reprinted with permission:
Hello S4E Officers,
My name is Alyssa and I'm the Events Coordinator for the College Democrats [REDACTED]. I was told that administrators have contacted S4E and told them "conservative students were protesting sustainability" and that you should come counter this protest at Monday's Faculty Senate Meeting.
As someone who is a HUGE believer in sustainability and environmentalism, I would like to let you know that administrators are lying if they have told you this is what students are protesting. The Residence Life plan is highly focused around "sustainability"- but not just environmental sustainability. Their definition of sustainability has included social justice and economic equality which are very politicized concepts.
As a progressive democrat and environmentalist, I personally am very in favor of reducing the gap between the rich and poor and advocating for gay rights which are two of many examples of economic equality and social justice. However, those are my personal choices and beliefs that I have decided for myself and those types of decisions should be made by individuals and not taught by a residence hall education plan.
One big misconception of the new ResLife plan is that sustainaility means teaching students to turn off the lights or use less plastic. [REDACTED] I can tell you that is not the case. In ResLife, they use ‘sustainability' to justify education relating to a specific political ideology which is very left-leaning.
Please consider whether you want the definition of sustainability to be twisted by Residence Life into meaning that everyone should adopt a specific set of political beliefs in order to be a ‘good citizen.' If you are like me, you will probably believe that each person should be able to form their own set of beliefs without feeling bad for not agreeing with ResLife beliefs.
I am very liberal and I would love if all students valued the political issues I do. However, it is no one's responsibility to ‘educate' students on a specific ideology and make them feel bad for having different opinions. The university should be a place which fosters the discussion of a broad range of ideologies, and the residence halls should not intimidate or educate students on any specifc political ideology.
I hope you see why members of College Democrats, College Republicans and many other student groups are joining together to advocate a limited definition of sustainability which only includes an environmental aspect and not a political aspect. We all believe, whether we are liberal or conservative, that your personal ideology should be your own choice and that students rights and freedoms should be protected from political indoctrination.
The Faculty Senate meeting is Monday, May 12 at 4 PM in Gore 104. I hope to see you there supporting our right to make up our own minds about our personal beliefs rather than allowing ResLife to educate us on the things they feel that we should believe.
Thank you, and if you have any questions, please e-mail me.
The proposal still tries to change students' "thoughts, values, beliefs, and actions." It still is an educational program with "learning outcomes." It maintains the RA "conversations." It maintains highly politicized and highly suspect activities.
"Citizenship responsibilities" are still the responsibilities defined by ResLife, now in even more narrow terms of environmental sustainability. It is not enough to simply put the word "environmental" before the word "sustainability" and then trust ResLife to re-envision all of its activities through an environmental lens-or through the even narrower lens of "issues of environmental sustainability that are relevant to residence hall living."
Changing a few words here and there cannot save the program from the indoctrination program that it has been intended to be from the start. The document is now a logical mess. The other two "circles" of sustainability—the social and political agenda—are still there in the activities. The proposal should go back to committee and start over again.
Or consider "learning outcome" 3: "Understand their own and others' concepts of justice." Why, again, is this a proper learning outcome for ResLife to teach rather than the faculty—are they failing to teach about justice? Is this topic going to be only about environmental sustainability now? Is "social justice" really gone from the proposal now?
Or consider the fact that the parties are still envisioned partly as guilt trips:
A welcome back party will be held in each complex for returning first-year students. At each social event, information will be posted on walls and event supplies to inform students of the economic and environmental impact of the event and items.
Oops, forgot to take out the word "economic," right? "This fork cost 7 cents, which could have been donated to a wind farm."
Now that the program is even more strongly hidden by doublespeak, students will have even less of an opportunity to understand what they are going to be allowed to opt out of.
The Faculty Senate again has just three days (including the weekend) to read, consider, and debate this proposal. To expect that an educational program of such magnitude should be considered within such a short time is unfair and unworthy of the University of Delaware. To revise the resolution supporting the plan by changing the words "educational plan" to "residential program"—while it still is clearly an educational plan—is more doublespeak and another attempt to pull the wool over the faculty's eyes. ResLife is still advertising its mission as its "educational priority," using language almost identical to its goal statement in the oft-revised proposal.
The Faculty Senate should take the time to get it right. The students of the University of Delaware deserve no less.
A friend reacted to the finding with, "That's impossible!" He's right. You can't commit racial harassment by reading an anti-Klan history.
For months, I felt isolated and dejected. Yet I knew that most of the faculty, staff and students at Indiana University were good people. The campus is a growing, thriving part of Indy, where people of all colors and religions come to study.
But the $106,000-a-year affirmative-action officer who declared me guilty of "racial harassment" never spoke to me or examined the book. My own union - the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - sent an obtuse shop steward to stifle my freedom to read. He told me, "You could be fired," that reading the book was "like bringing pornography to work."
It truly is a shame that the people Sampson refers to hold the amount of authority and influence that they do on a university campus (not to mention that generous salary!). As Sampson writes:
Abolitionist Charles Sumner said, "Prejudice is the child of ignorance. It is sure to prevail where people do not know each other." The people at the Affirmative Action Office were so myopically intent on finding a Klansman, they failed to see a natural ally standing before them.
The unchecked power of such campus bureaucrats needs to be restrained. And if a union like AFSCME won't protect its workers' constitutional rights, it should go out of business.
Thankfully, there have been some positive developments, as IUPUI Chancellor Charles R. Bantz has pledged that the school "will be reexamining the campuswide affirmative action processes and procedures relating to internal complaints." Hopefully, this will prevent the occurrence of a similar episode in the future. While this of course does not erase the harm done to Sampson, my hope is that one embarrassing situation is enough for IUPUI to have learned its lesson.
When the 2007-2008 University of Delaware Residence Life indoctrination program became the subject of withering public attention before it was quickly "suspended" by its president, FIRE received dozens of emails from students and RAs about ResLife's coercive administration of the program. I am amazed that senior administrators still seem willing to trust ResLife to administer a new indoctrination program, watered down but chock-full of a social and political "sustainability" agenda that goes far beyond UD's environmental initiatives.
Today we publish for the first time an email from an RA who apparently feared retribution from ResLife and chose to remain anonymous. The RA warns us that "Residence Life will most likely re-name their current practices and continue to force RAs to push their agenda in the residence halls. They dedicated their department to forming the minds and opinions of students who live in the Residence Halls and will not give up on their rhetoric so easily."
Here's the whole email:
Subject: comments from RA at UD Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 20:51:58 -0400 From: UD RA To:
As an RA at UD, I would like to say thank you exposing the Residence Life department and revealing the ideological re-education that they force us to deliver. President Harker called for this program to be stopped and reviewed, but please do not think this alone is "victory". The department of Residence Life will most likely re-name their current practices and continue to force RAs to push their agenda in the residence halls. They dedicated their department to forming the minds and opinions of students who live in the Residence Halls and will not give up on their rhetoric so easily. They will challenge us, as is their way, to come up with new and innovative approaches to programming and curriculum which deliver their messages in thinly veiled form. Even though they claim to assess and collect feedback from students and staff, this information never alters their ideology or impacts their ideological agenda. Any RA who criticizes or opposes a viewpoint presented by the department is usually required to adopt their viewpoint or resign from the position because they can't "connect" to the department's curriculum. Please follow up with the school's residence hall department to ensure that the methods and practices and ideological stand are truly reworked so students are given options and choices instead of answers and values.
-Anonymous
UD RA, you nailed it.
I encourage those who applied to be RAs and hall directors next year to let us know, in your own words, what ResLife has asked of you regarding next year's program.
I also encourage members of the Faculty Senate to read the accounts above and read last year's curriculum— the "confrontation training," the "delivery strategies," the "strong male RAs" hired to break the "resistance" of males by "combat[ing] male residents' concepts of traditional male identity," the personal questions about students' sexual awakening, the questionnaires about which genders, races, and ethnicities each student would date or befriend, the "treatment" metaphor for students' incorrect values, attitudes, and beliefs, the immediate notification of the police (day or night) for "Any instance that is perceived by those involved as being ... oppressive," the activities in which students were instructed to act out the worst stereotypes they could think of—then ask themselves why they think ResLife can be trusted with anything like the current proposal.
A misunderstanding that FIRE occasionally runs into is the idea that if someone is exercising their freedom of expression in a non-spoken way, such as a posted display, it is a legitimate expressive response to deface or destroy that display as a countervailing exercise of freedom of expression. This idea is simply wrong. What brought this to my attention was this YouTube video from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, which shows a textbook example of something that is NOT a legitimate expression of opinion:
Simply put, tearing down someone else's display is not expression—it's vandalism. The same goes for tearing down posters with which you don't agree—another illegitimate form of "expression" that FIRE often hears about. Students who engage in such activities can and should be punished, as the marketplace of ideas cannot survive when those opposed to an idea or expressive act are allowed to destroy all traces of it.
One other aspect of this video bears mentioning: at the very beginning of the video, the main person tearing up the crosses, identified in the video as Roderick King, says, "In 1973 it was made a constitutional right for a woman to have an abortion...Since it's a right, you don't have the right to challenge it." Nothing could be further from the truth—Americans have the right to speak out for or against any and all public policies in the United States. Hence the irony that the First Amendment protects even the speech of those who would try to abolish it. In a truly free society, it could be no other way.
Speech codes were the topic of today's nationally syndicated comic strip Mallard Fillmore. FIRE and some of our cases have been the subject of Mallard Fillmore's commentary many times in the past, and we're always very thankful for creator Bruce Tinsley's attention to our work.
Of course, speech codes are no laughing matter, as our report Spotlight on Speech Codes 2007 aptly demonstrates. Our report concluded that 75% of colleges and universities surveyed in FIRE's speech codes database, Spotlight, maintain policies that restrict protected speech on campus. Even more unfortunate is the fact that only 2% of colleges and universities surveyed were free of speech codes. To top it all off, as our recent press release concerning Shippensburg University's speech code reveals, even when students or faculty go to federal court to protect their free speech rights and win, universities are still more than willing to ignore injunctions and the law itself to enforce these unconstitutional speech codes.
So even though the comic gave me a chuckle as I was reading my morning paper The Bulletin, quickly thereafter I was reminded about the harsh, cold reality of the actual state of free speech on college campuses.
Posted by Sean Clark on May 8, 2008, at 10:50 a.m.
In a press release today, FIRE announces that a complaint has been filed in federal court today by attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) against Shippensburg University. The complaint alleges that Shippensburg University has dishonestly reinstituted unconstitutional policies in violation of the terms of a 2004 legal settlement reached with members of FIRE’s Legal Network.
The settlement in 2004 came after the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania issued a preliminary injunction against the university, ordering Shippensburg’s then-president, Anthony F. Ceddia, not to enforce unconstitutional provisions of Shippensburg’s code. The settlement ended a lawsuit brought by Legal Network attorneys David A. French and William Adair Bonner, and it was the first of a string of victories for our Speech Codes Litigation Project.
As FIRE President Greg Lukianoffsaid, “Shippensburg’s inexplicable violation of the 2004 settlement demonstrates a blatant disregard for the First Amendment and its own promises. By brazenly reneging on the terms of an agreement that previously saved it from an embarrassing defeat in court, Shippensburg has further tainted its tarnished reputation.”
Shippensburg’s earlier speech code banned expression clearly protected by the United States Constitution. For example, the college’s harassment policy defined harassment as “unwanted conduct which annoys, threatens, or alarms a person or group,” and outlawed “emotional abuse.” The code also violated the right of private conscience by requiring that “every member of the community” mirror the official views of the university administration “in their attitudes and behaviors.” In his preliminary injunction against Shippensburg in September 2003, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III held that many of these provisions “could certainly be used to truncate debate and free expression by students.”
The complaint filed today indicates that Shippensburg has reinserted unconstitutional provisions into current university policy, in many cases restoring language copied seemingly verbatim from the old policies. For example, the 2007-2008 edition of the Swataney, Shippensburg’s student handbook, mandates that “every member of this community” ensure that the official views of the university administration “will be mirrored in their attitudes and behaviors,” and once again prohibits “emotional abuse.” The complaint alleges several other substantive constitutional infirmities, including a challenge to the school’s harassment code.
Over the winter we reported on a rash of press censorship at universities across the country. One of the most troubling incidents occurred at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. As we stated at the time:
Quinnipiac University, for its part, has defended its restrictive policy of preventing the Quinnipiac Chronicle from publishing any new stories or updates on its web site until a new print issue appears. Moreover, Quinnipiac has threatened the student editor with discipline or even termination for publicly challenging the policy-since, the university's spokesperson says, the editor is an employee of the school and therefore is expected to show support for the university's policies-and, it seems, is expected not to criticize such policies in public.
In the last few months, the Quinnipiac Chronicle has debated severing ties with the university and becoming an independent publication.
This week, however, the Student Press Law Center reports that Quinnipiac administrators have changed the process for selecting subsequent editors. The Quinnipiac Chronicle's faculty adviser and student affairs adviser used to choose the editor-in-chief and managing editors, who in turn would select the rest of the editors. Now, the dean of students will select the Chronicle's editorial board. The editor-in-chief will be selected from a pool of students nominated by Quinnipiac's deans, and the rest of the editors will be selected from a pool chosen by the outgoing editor in chief and managing editors.
The arrangement is ostensibly temporary, and the administration claims that in the future, the editor-in-chief will be allowed to select the other editors. But the intervention seems to demonstrate that the administration plans on keeping a tight leash on the paper to squelch inconvenient dissent. At any rate, the takeover was dire enough that current editor in chief Jason Braff and all the rest of the 20 applicants for editorial positions have withdrawn their applications for positions. They instead are planning to start a new Web publication independent of the Quinnipiac administration.
Remarking on her decision to leave the paper, Campus News Editor Jaclyn Hirsch said, "I wasn't willing to put myself in a situation where I felt open and free journalism wasn't the first priority." At a modern liberal arts college, she shouldn't have to.
Posted by Luke Sheahan on May 7, 2008, at 03:56 p.m.
The University of Delaware faculty member who ought to know the most about the new Residence Life proposal was fundamentally mistaken (if not outright prevaricating) in having said, as the Delaware News Journal reports, that the plan is simply a contribution to UD's environmental sustainability agenda. The truth, which Student Life Committee chairman Matt Robinson surely knows by now, is that the proposal goes far beyond environmental sustainability in order to push a highly developed social and political agenda.
As John Leo and Peter Wood have pointed out, this agenda is not unique to the University of Delaware but is central to a large "sustainability education" movement. In this movement, the three "circles" of sustainability include not just environmentalism but also education toward specific social, political, and economic goals. These goals include worldwide redistribution of wealth and a variety of deeply politicized agenda items such as those listed here.
Such social and political goals are central, literally, to the ResLife proposal. Only in the center of the three overlapping circles, in this diagram, can one find the proper set of thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs, actions, and policies. UD faculty with a bit of extra time should read how ResLife defined sustainability in one of its rejected proposals, using the language of producing "ecologically sound, socially just and economically viable" institutions. ResLife already knows what counts as "socially just" and "economically viable," despite the protestations in the ResLife proposal that these topics are up for debate.
ResLife's goal is to change the thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs, and actions of University of Delaware students to fit its ideological agenda. For the evidence, faculty with a lot of extra time can read last year's highly articulated indoctrination plan. A lot of it is pretty scary. As one ResLife administrator put it,
The environment is rich with opportunities to let students know what we consider important and leave a mental footprint on their consciousness. [emphasis added]
Whether or not one agrees with elements of this agenda, I again submit that it is inappropriate for any university worth its salt as a liberal arts institution to accept a very politicized agenda as institutional policy and then to press it upon students. Do the citizens of Delaware really believe that their state's flagship university should try to teach the future leading citizens of the state that only one set of thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs, actions, and policies is the best? I can understand a religious school promoting a singular ideology, but not a public institution.
ResLife has not changed its ideology, its mission, or its promotion of its ideology in its latest proposal. Instead, ResLife has hidden all of this under the guise of "citizenship" values.
Today, I received a fundraising letter from the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development. The organization is a large consortium that works to create "a healthier environment with social equality and economic well being" and is "the lead organization for U.S. participation in the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development."
The organization explicitly asserts that it is trying to establish new norms in the United States through education:
The vision of sustainable human society resides in the common ground of economic growth and equity, conservation of natural resources and the natural environment, and worldwide social development. We are dedicated to creating a new norm within the United States. This new norm is that the public will be "literate" about the sustainability challenges, and have both the skills and the attitudes to participate in solutions. This new norm is a necessity to produce a sustainable future. [emphasis added]
ResLife is a part of this movement to change attitudes and norms. It works closely, it seems, with the Sustainability Taskforce of the American College Personnel Association. ACPA's big upcoming event is an Institute on Sustainability at Harvard University. The institute "will seek to create education and awareness for sustainability's triple bottom line: healthy social systems, healthy environment and healthy economy."
In some contexts, all of this activism would be perfectly fine from the point of view of the marketplace of ideas. Private organizations can advocate for whatever they want. It is totally unacceptable, however, for this activism to be pressed as a re-education program for University of Delaware students or students at any school that values diverse views on controversial issues.
If these points are not yet clear to the University of Delaware faculty, I again urge them to investigate the matter and form their own conclusions.
Posted by Adam Kissel on May 7, 2008, at 02:35 p.m.
FIRE is very pleased that the University of Delaware Faculty Senate has delayed a vote on the deeply flawed Residence Life proposal for next year, as I requested. The campus now has a bit less than a week to genuinely debate it. I hope that sincere debate ensues and that Faculty Senate leaders and upper-level administrators do not try to keep pushing the proposal through.
I am told that students will be coming out to make their voices heard, and I hope that there is ample time next week for all points of view to be heard.
The Associated Press picked up the story, which has been published by the Delaware News Journal. The UD Review also has published an original article on the story, along with a photo of the students who arrived with literature in protest against the proposal. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has announced the news here. The point was amply made that in the proposal and for ResLife, sustainability is not just about the environment, as reported by the NAS:
Professor Matt Robinson, chairman of the Faculty Senate Student Life Committee, who presented the new Res Life proposal[,] offered the bold claim that, "The concept of sustainability, that's only speaking in terms of environmental." His attempt to package the new program as only conservation and environmental preservation, however, didn't persuade skeptical faculty members who had taken the trouble to read the details. They replied that the term sustainability is being used to sneak in "a curriculum of indoctrination" similar to the one President Harker suspended in November.
The student who spoke up also sent a letter to the Faculty Senate. Here are some thoughtful excerpts addressed mainly to those who defended the program:
You also argued that the definition of sustainability is limited to environmental aspects, but this is not shown anywhere in the plan. Additionally, RAs are taught during their intensive two weeks of training in the fall that sustainability has three components: environmental, social and economic. RAs are to implement this broad notion of sustainability into their position as an influential peer. Although the ResLife program was "shut down" RAs were never given a new definition of sustainability or told to limit their sustainability education with residents to include only environmental aspects. Furthermore, it is clearly illustrated in the current Spring Plan as well as the proposed plan for next year that sustainability is a highly politicized term with broad interpretations relating to a specific political id[e]ology.
You consistently claimed that the problem lies with the implementation plan which is different than the program plan. This is not the case. You can insert the word "optional" in the document hundreds of times, but that does not change the nature of the department. Regardless of how optional floor meetings and programs are, RAs are judged as successful or unsuccessful based upon their ability to get residents to do what ResLife wants...
You have engaged the student population very little throughout this entire process. Any student you talk to usually has a very strong opinion on the topic of Residence Life, yet only a select group of people were allowed to take part in the creation of a future plan. I am very interested in the future direction of the program and I am an active student leader on campus, yet I was never once invited to provide feedback or personal insight into the process of creating the proposed plan. Many other students feel this way as well.
I would like to make a few suggestions. [...] Students pay thousands to get a comprehensive education in the classroom, and if they are passionate about a particular subject, they can join a student group related to their interests. Each residence hall complex has a community council which can take charge of implementing programming that interests students without carrying a political agenda. Resident Assistants are not qualified to "educate" other students and they should not be burdened with such an impossible task as RAs do not even have a bachelor's degree.
As FIRE, the National Association of Scholars, and others on and off campus have argued, it will be a good thing if the proposal is rejected and ResLife continues doing what it reportedly has been doing this spring: running a traditional residential program that does not try to inculcate politicized values into students, a program that does not try to make students conform to ResLife's favorite thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs, and actions. That seems to me to be what students want—not pizza parties where signs are posted that explain the impact of the party on the environment, not career counseling that pushes sustainability careers as the only ones that responsible citizens would choose, and not floor meetings where students are told they have to opt out of social time with their fellow residents if they don't want to be bombarded with ResLife's sustainability agenda.
I strongly believe that once the members of the Faculty Senate carefully consider and debate the ResLife proposal, they will conclude that this is not a proposal that can easily be salvaged in a way that respects students' freedom of conscience and academic freedom. Again, I think the Faculty Senate should reject it because it is unworthy of a great university or any school that sees itself as providing a liberal arts education.
Be sure to read FIRE co-founder and chairman emeritus Alan Charles Kors' deeply insightful, elegant, and stirring account of his experiences in higher education over the last five decades. Examining the changes in academia he has seen over his lifetime, Alan writes:
Under the heirs of the academic Sixties, we moved on campus after campus from their Free Speech Movement to their politically correct speech codes; from their abolition of mandatory chapel to their imposition of Orwellian mandatory sensitivity and multicultural training; from their freedom to smoke pot unmolested to their war today against the kegs and spirits—literal and metaphorical—of today's students; from their acquisition of young adult status to their infantilization of "kids" who lack their insight; from their self-proclaimed dreams of racial and sexual integration to their ever more balkanized campuses organized on principles of group characteristics and group responsibility; from their right to define themselves as individuals—a foundational right—to their official, imposed, and politically orthodox notions of identity. American college students became the victims of a generational swindle of truly epic proportions. If that part of the faculty not complicit in this did not know that it was happening, it was by choice or willful blindness.
In March, FIRE reported that four protesters, two of whom were students, were arrested for disorderly conduct after a protest held by Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Alabama (UA) was deemed disruptive by the university.
The protest was intended to simulate disturbances the protesters attribute to the United States armed forces in Iraq. Dressed in military garb, the four protesters ran shouting into a UA building. Once inside, the "soldiers" staged a mock abduction of three other protesters dressed in headscarves, hustling them out the door. Then, outside, one of the demonstrators announced a speech to take place that evening on campus by a veteran of the Iraq War.
Today, the Tuscaloosa Newsreports that the four demonstrators have been acquitted of the disorderly conduct charge.
Tuscaloosa County District Court Judge issued the ruling Friday for the four members of the Students for a Democratic Society, including two UA students, after prosecutors finished with their witnesses, said Jenae Strainer, a UA student and SDS member called as a witness for defense attorneys.
"We cannot allow the disorderly conduct statute to be read so broadly as to make it a crime to engage in free speech," said Allison Neal, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Alabama, which represented the protesters. "This is especially true at a time when freedom of expression is so critical to our democracy."
The two UA students arrested must still face campus judiciary hearings, but the court ruling should bode well for them. FIRE will continue to monitor the situation.
Posted by Luke Sheahan on May 5, 2008, at 04:54 p.m.
This afternoon, the University of Delaware Faculty Senate is to vote on (or table till another time) a proposal for what I have described as another indoctrination program using evidence directly from the proposal.
I have sent an open letter to the UD faculty via the Faculty Senate in advance of the meeting. The text of it can be viewed here. I point the faculty to this evidence and say:
In this letter, I am asking each of you to read the 2008-2009 Residence Life Program Plan with the same level of critical engagement that you use when you are at your best in your field. I believe that if you do so, you will see why the proposal is unworthy of the University of Delaware for its unrelenting inculcation of a highly specific political agenda. Whether or not one agrees with elements of the agenda, a serious reader is likely to agree that this kind of "education" has no place in a residential program....
The ResLife directors are the same people who asked students when they discovered their sexual identity--in private one-on-one meetings with RAs. They gave students questionnaires regarding which genders and races they would befriend and date. They did much more with the explicit goal of pressuring all UD students to conform to ResLife's "correct" views on controversial topics. These are now the same officials who want to take every opportunity--one-on-one sessions with RAs, floor meetings, bulletin boards, parties, and even career exploration sessions--to pressure students to accept ResLife's ideology.
Again, I do not quibble with the merits of any particular ideology. But it is unworthy of a great university or any liberal arts education to begin with certainty about a wide variety of topics and then to embark on a program designed to pressure students to adopt them. Such re-education programs not only violate the Constitution and the canons of academic freedom, but they also are fundamentally at odds with the principles of a free society. Those who are so confident in their own ideology should let their ideas be tested and debated in the unique "marketplace of ideas" that a university offers, not empowered to declare truth with the imprimatur of the faculty....
Also, the Faculty Senate meetings can be watched live online via webcast. Since the ResLife proposal is at virtually the end of the agenda (see agenda section VII.3.E), you probably don't need to start watching at 4 PM, but the meeting may go more quickly than you might think, even though there is so much for the faculty to discuss.
To attend the meeting in person, go to 104 Gore Hall on the Newark, Delaware campus.
But never mind what's actually inside the book—it's got a picture of hooded Klansmen burning a cross on the cover! Following this nasty bit of anti-intellectual illogic, Sampson's workmates promptly freaked out. One coworker told Sampson that reading a book about the Klan was akin to ogling pornography at work.
Sampson was then charged with, and found guilty of, racial harassment. Fortunately, after letters from the ACLU and FIRE, IUPUI removed all records of this finding from his file and Charles Bantz, IUPUI's Chancellor, stepped up and admitted the school's mistake. Greg concludes his post:
Unfortunately, that makes Bantz something of a rarity among his fellow college bigwigs. Far too often, administrators dig in their heels when confronted with their abuse of student rights.
For example, take Brandeis University, named a recipient of a 2008 "Muzzle Award" by the Thomas Jefferson Center for Free Expression for finding a professor guilty of "racial harassment" for explaining the pejorative meaning of the term "wetback" in class. Or Colorado College where students have been found guilty of "violence" for publishing a parody of a feminist newsletter. Or how about the fact that most colleges and universities still maintain laughably unconstitutional speech codes?
Our latest installation of FIREside Chats features an interview with Hayden Barnes, the student at Valdosta State University (VSU) who was expelled for publicly protesting the school's decision to construct two new parking garages on campus. Hayden is currently embattled in a lawsuit against the university, VSU President Ronald Zaccari, and the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. In today's podcast, FIRE's Media Director Emily Guidry and Hayden discuss the school's arguments against him, his legal team's response, how the ordeal has affected him personally and how he hopes his case can help other students around the country. Be sure to check back every Monday for new episodes of FIREside Chats.
The University of Louisville maintains such a repressive speech code, it's hard to know where to begin. But since we have to dive in somewhere, let's start with the fact that Louisville "requires that public speech and discourse on campus shall be civil." For the sake of the legal profession, I'm hoping that Louisville's general counsel was out sick the day this crossed his or her desk, because there is just no way such a requirement could possibly be constitutional. As far as impermissible restrictions on speech at a public university go, this is a twofer: it's both vague (what counts as "civil," and who gets to define it?) and overbroad (uncivil speech is certainly protected by the Constitution).
Indeed, Louisville's prohibition of "uncivil speech," whatever that means, brings instantly to mind FIRE's victory at San Francisco State University (SFSU) from a couple months back. Why? Because in issuing a preliminary injunction against SFSU's speech code—which, like Louisville's, required students to be "civil" to one another—a federal judge held that SFSU's civility requirement was unquestionably unconstitutionally overbroad:
The First Amendment difficulty with this kind of mandate should be obvious: the requirement "to be civil to one another" and the directive to eschew behaviors that are not consistent with "good citizenship" reasonably can be understood as prohibiting the kind of communication that it is necessary to use to convey the full emotional power with which a speaker embraces her ideas or the intensity and richness of the feelings that attach her to her cause. Similarly, mandating civility could deprive speakers of the tools they most need to connect emotionally with their audience, to move their audience to share their passion. In sum, there is a substantial risk that the civility requirement will inhibit or deter use of the forms and means of communication that, to many speakers in circumstances of the greatest First Amendment sensitivity, will be the most valued and the most effective.
Enough said.
But my favorite part (by which I mean the most hilariously unconstitutional part) of Louisville's code is their harassment section:
A person is guilty of harassment when, with intent to harass, annoy or alarm another person, he or she:
(c) In a public place, makes an offensively coarse utterance, gesture, or display, or addresses abusive language to any person present.
Besides the anachronistic, Victorian-era prohibition of "offensively coarse utterances, gestures, or displays" and the hopelessly vague restriction against "abusive language," what really makes this section of the speech code amusing is the fact that Louisville isn't even trying to meet the legal definition of harassment in an education setting.
The best legal definition for peer-on-peer sexual harassment in the educational context was set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629, 650 (1999), and requires conduct or expression to be "so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim's access to an educational opportunity or benefit." Obviously, Louisville's policy (which sounds more like the signs you see at zoos) doesn't even come close. Louisville's harassment policy also fails to meet the somewhat weaker definition of sexual harassment promulgated by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which prohibits "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature so severe, persistent, or pervasive that it affects a student's ability to participate in or benefit from an education program or activity, or creates an intimidating, threatening or abusive educational environment." So all in all, it's about as far off the mark as can be.
For these reasons, the University of Louisville has earned our May 2008 Speech Code of the Month. If you believe that your college or university should be a Speech Code of the Month, please email speechcodes@thefire.org with a link to the policy and a brief description of why you think attention should be drawn to this code.
Following the attention given by the Delaware Association of Scholars to the University of Delaware Residence Life position called "Graduate Assistant for Diversity Initiatives," the university has removed the job description from its website.
