Table of Contents
Today’s ‘Campus Alert’: Hug At Your Own Risk
Today’s installment of our weekly Campus Alert feature in the New York Post discusses a sexual misconduct policy at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania with which FIRE has taken issue for quite some time.
The policy, which defines “brushing, touching, grabbing, pinching, patting, hugging and kissing” as sexual interactions, requires “verbal,” “continuing,” and “active” consent to participate in these exchanges.
As we note in Campus Alert:
In practice, complying with Gettysburg’s policy seems to mean that each and every physical contact between students is doomed to be embarrassingly awkward. (“Can I hold your hand?” “Yes.” “Can I continue to hold your hand?” “Yes.”) But of course Gettysburg students don’t comply with these ridiculous prohibitions; they’re students, not robots.Every Gettysburg student has likely violated the policy at some point. So why does it exist? Since it clearly has no relation to reality, the policy should be scrapped.Gettysburg’s administration insists that while the policy is enforced, it has never been used to crackdown on hugging or hand-holding, but the fact that the policy still exists means that administrators have explicitly reserved the right to punish students for this behavior when they deem it necessary. Trusting administrators with the power to punish on the promise that they won’t abuse that power is a losing proposition.
FIRE has been watching this case for a year now, and although Gettysburg promised a revision of the policy at the beginning of this academic year, the old policy is still on the books. As we said in Campus Alert, Gettysburg students should demand change, for while this policy exists, the danger remains that administrators may arbitrarily choose to enforce it.
Recent Articles
FIRE’s award-winning Newsdesk covers the free speech news you need to stay informed.
FIRE statement on Gov. Abbott’s campus anti-Semitism executive order
State-mandated campus censorship violates the First Amendment and will not effectively answer anti-Semitism.
May public officials block critics on social media? It depends, says the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court decisions vindicated FIRE on public officials’ use of personal social media accounts.
She’s back! Strossen’s new and updated edition of ‘Defending Pornography’ — First Amendment News 417
First Amendment News is a weekly blog and newsletter about free expression issues by Ronald K. L. Collins and is editorially independent from FIRE.
Cornell concedes small changes to otherwise substantially restrictive new speech policies
Cornell’s ‘Year of Free Expression’ is shaping up as a mixed bag — at best.