Restrictions on Red Raider Rhetoric Removed ... Somewhat
by Jim Brown and Jody Brown
December 12, 2003
(AgapePress) - Pressure from a First Amendment lawsuit and student activists has prompted a Texas university to eliminate some of its free-speech restrictions on campus.Texas Tech University has dropped a policy that designated a 20-foot-wide gazebo as the sole free-speech area on campus. The school is being sued by the Alliance Defense Fund and the Liberty Legal Institute as part of a nationwide campaign by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) to overturn public university speech codes.
FIRE's Greg Lukianoff says although the school has massively expanded its free-speech zones to six larger areas -- meaning free-speech areas "can be measured in acres instead of feet" -- repressive policies are still in place and other areas of the campus remain censorship zones. The school's 28,000 students, he says, still suffer under a "censorship regime."
"They still define harassment as any communication that is intended to intimidate or humiliate any person," he explains. He adds while it may not necessarily be commendable to humiliate someone, speech that mocks the political point of view of one's political opponents is protected speech. "A tremendous amount of important political or philosophical speech can involve demeaning the opinions of others," he says.
According to Lukianoff, Tech students have been successful in forging a broad coalition to oppose policies limiting free speech on campus. He explains that one of the newest groups, Students for Free Speech, is made up partially of students who contacted FIRE in January to fight the Free Speech Gazebo problem.
That group, he says, has been pressuring the university throughout the year and holding what he describes as "creative protests." One of those protests involved a funeral procession for the First Amendment, which Lukianoff says was "a very effective piece of political theater."
Under Tech's speech codes, use of the terms "boy," "girl," and "honey" for adults constitutes sexual harassment. The school also forbids advertisements that do not meet its standard of "good taste."
