Free-Speech Advocate Defends Students' Right to 'Provocative Satire' Form of Protest
by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
December 19, 2003
(AgapePress) - A Philadelphia-based civil liberties group has launched a nationwide campaign to expose the double standards of university officials who censor student protests of affirmative action.When the student group College Republicans at the University of Washington tried to hold a satirical "Affirmative Action Bake Sale" where blacks and Hispanics were charged less than whites for the same items, angry students tore down the College Republicans signs and threw their cookies on the ground -- and in the face of one of the organizers.
However, according to Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), instead of protecting the bake sale participants from violence, the administration and the campus police shut down their peaceful protest.
Like several other conservative student groups across America, the College Republicans were using the bake sale to make a point about what they perceive as the unfairness and absurdity of affirmative action. However, their "guerilla theater" protest elicited a strong negative response, not only from students, but also from the university. Lukianoff says school administrators took no disciplinary action against the angry students who disrupted the bake sale, but instead chose to censure the conservative group for its demonstration.
"What action did the administration take to the students who committed the vandalism and assault?" Lukianoff asks, pointing out that throwing cookies in someone's face is assault. "They didn't do anything at all," he says.
But on the other hand, the FIRE spokesman asks: "What action did they take against the College Republicans?" The answer? "The University of Washington Board of Regents wrote an open letter condemning the College Republicans and not even mentioning the fact that they were shutdown through, basically, mob violence."
Lukianoff says peaceful protest in the form of provocative satire is fully protected speech in America. His group is considering legal action against the University of Washington and other schools that have shut down affirmative action bake sales in recent months.
The free-speech advocate feels that what is horrifying about the incident at the University of Washington is that the school officials implicitly endorsed mob rule.
"When students resort to violence to censor other students," Lukianoff says, "the correct response is to prevent the students from resorting to violence, not to shut down the protest to which they're responding. To allow thugs to shut down a protest is to allow the least tolerant member of your campus community to dictate what everyone else can hear."
FIRE has committed itself to defending students' right to conduct their nonviolent, satirical demonstrations against affirmative action. The organization reports that several colleges that have attempted to silence this form of protest. At the University of California-Irvine, a bake sale was shut down as discriminatory, as was another at William and Mary. And at Northwestern University, officials ordered students to cease selling their cookies or face the police.
In a recent press release, FIRE CEO Thor Halvorssen said, "College administrators appear to be under the mistaken impression that protesting affirmative action is not covered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Freedom of speech is a right enjoyed equally and fully by both supporters and opponents of affirmative action."
FIRE's public awareness campaign will include mailings to alumni, parents, university donors, and state legislators, and will seek to expose to many the attempt by some U.S. colleges and universities to censor the voices of students opposing affirmative action.
