School Spotlight

Lone Star College-Tomball
Speech Code Rating
- At present, FIRE does not maintain information on this school's policies.
Lone Star College: Student Group Threatened with Probation and Derecognition for Posting Flyer
September 26, 2008
The Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) were among a variety of student organizations distributing flyers at Lone Star College – Tomball during an event for student groups to recruit new members. YCT’s flyer included a satirical list of “Top Ten Gun Safety Tips” including, “If your gun misfires, never look down the barrel to inspect… Read more
Speech Code of the Month: Wake Forest University
May 5, 2014
FIRE announces its Speech Code of the Month for May 2014: Wake Forest University. Wake Forest’s “Campus Posting” policy explicitly restricts student postings on the basis of their viewpoint. Not only does the policy ban any postings subjectively deemed “sexist,” “racist,” “derogatory,” or not in “good taste,” but it threatens violators with fines and disciplinary action. With this policy, Wake Forest places an impermissibly heavy burden on students wishing to express controversial political or social opinions on campus.
Lone Star Trustee Speaks out about Free Speech on Campus
September 11, 2013
Ron Trowbridge, Lone Star College (Texas) trustee, Senior Fellow at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, and former chief of staff to Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, wrote for SeeThruEdu on Sunday to reiterate his remarks at a recent Lone Star College System Board meeting on why freedom of speech is so important,… Read more
FIRE Launches New Video Series With Short Film on Censorship of Gun-Related Speech
June 30, 2010
PHILADELPHIA, June 30, 2010—Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is proud to release a new short film, “Empty Holsters: Gun Speech on America’s Campuses,” highlighting widespread campus censorship of student speech about guns. The film is the first in a new FIRE series focusing on how colleges and universities across America are… Read more
Rights in the News: At Maryland, Virginia Tech, UMass and Elsewhere, FIRE Cases Grabbing Headlines
April 10, 2009
Another week, another crush of FIRE cases from around the country battling for headlines. I’ll start with Greg’s Huffington Post blog on the controversy swirling around the University of Maryland campus in the wake of a legislator’s threat to pull funding from the university if it allowed students to screen an adult film on campus—which,… Read more
Jefferson ‘Muzzle’ Awards for Censorship Given to Two Colleges Involved in FIRE Cases
April 7, 2009
Every year, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression awards the "Jefferson Muzzle" to a few of the year’s most egregious violators of free speech rights. For the second year in a row (and three out of the last four years), the Center has selected one or more of the malefactors in… Read more
Too Often, First Amendment Protections Denied to Second Amendment Speech
March 10, 2009
The First Amendment protects core political speech—and, as should be obvious, that protection extends to speech regarding the Second Amendment. This means that students at public universities and private universities that promise the right to free expression on campus must be free to engage in unfettered discussion of the merits of federal, state and local… Read more
Rights in the News: Controversy at Southern Illinois Ignites FIRE’s 2009 Efforts
January 16, 2009
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC) Chancellor Samuel Goldman and his administration have been a veritable one-stop shop for newsworthy content lately, as followers of The Torch this week are no doubt aware. In one of three articles penned by Adam Testa for the Southern Illinoisan, Goldman referred to FIRE as "embarrassing" SIUC into defending… Read more
In Texas, First Amendment Imperiled in 2008
January 1, 2009
I’m not sure what happened down in Texas in 2008, but administrators at several schools have been unusually cowardly about even the slightest challenges to their ideas of good order on campus. During the election season there was the Great Non-Riot of 2008 at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), where two students faced… Read more
2008 Highlights: FIRE Places Full-Page Ad in ‘U.S. News & World Report’ Calling Out ‘Red Alert’ Schools
December 31, 2008
While FIRE works on cases from hundreds of schools in a given year, we have a special list for those schools that have shown unique intransigence in the face of criticism from FIRE for abusing student and faculty rights. We call that special list our Red Alert list, and right now five schools have earned… Read more
Speech Code of the Month: Lone Star College
December 1, 2008
FIRE announces its Speech Code of the Month for December 2008: Lone Star College in Texas. FIRE recently addressed the suppression of free speech at one of the colleges in the Lone Star College System, when Lone Star College–Tomball censored a student group for distributing a jocular flyer listing “Top Ten Gun Safety Tips.” The… Read more
Stop Invoking Virginia Tech to Punish Protected Speech
November 24, 2008
Of particular note in the court order in Barnes v. Zaccari, the federal civil rights lawsuit filed after former Valdosta State University (VSU) student Hayden Barnes was expelled for posting a collage on Facebook.com protesting the construction of new parking facilities at VSU, is this excerpt: For purposes of the motion to dismiss, the court… Read more
Weekly Media Round-Up: Binghamton Case Hits National Stage, Temple and Lone Star Cases Continue to Reverberate
November 14, 2008
Yesterday, FIRE went public with its efforts to protect the constitutional rights of Binghamton University graduate student Andre Massena. As you’ve already seen from Adam’s earlier Torch post, yesterday’s press release quickly brought the issue to the national stage, with the story appearing at The Volokh Conspiracy and in The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription… Read more
Does Lone Star College–Tomball Really Fear the Word ‘Gun’?
November 12, 2008
Monday at Examiner.com, writer Garry Reed ridiculed Lone Star College–Tomball for its outlawing of any mention of “firearms” or “weapons” because of the “fear and concern” that such language apparently brings to people on campus. Here’s most of his good piece: [I]f you think there might be even the slightest possibility that there could be… Read more
Victory at Temple College Explained in Today’s Podcast
November 10, 2008
Last Thursday, FIRE’s press release described our latest victory for freedom of expression at Temple College (Texas), where the school’s president quickly reversed the censorship of a religiously themed cartoon and the Nietzsche quotation “God is dead” after receiving a letter from FIRE. In today’s episode of FIREside Chats, Adam Kissel, Director of FIRE’s Individual… Read more
Weekly Media Round-up: FIRE’s Defense of Satire and Political Expression on Full Display
October 24, 2008
Earlier this week, FIRE blogged and issued a press release about Lone Star College–Tomball’s threats against the school’s Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) chapter for distributing a satirical and entirely protected "gun-safety" flyer. After pointing out the college’s exploitation of the tragedies at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois as a way to silence protected speech,… Read more
‘Top Ten Gun Safety Tips’ Censored at Lone Star College in Texas
October 20, 2008
The stifling of parody on college campuses in recent years is a sad tale of censorship, oversensitivity, and overreaction in the wake of actual incidents of violence. The latest case, as we document in today’s press release, occurred over nothing worse—be careful, and don’t be alarmed!—than a Letterman–style “top ten” list of “Gun Safety Tips.”… Read more
“Top Ten Gun Safety Tips” Censored at Lone Star College in Texas
October 20, 2008
HOUSTON, October 20, 2008—After distributing a jocular flyer listing “Top Ten Gun Safety Tips” at the school’s “club rush,” a student group was threatened with probation and derecognition at Lone Star College–Tomball, a public college near Houston. After college officials banned the Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) from distributing the flyer, the school’s general counsel… Read more
Follow FIRE