Christians Confront Censure, Censorship on College Campuses
by Jim Brown and Fred Jackson
March 2, 2004
(AgapePress) - Two University of Oklahoma students have filed a federal lawsuit against the school over its refusal to fund their student newspaper because of its Christian perspective.
When Ricky Thomas and James Wickett applied for funds to help defer the cost of printing The Beacon OU, they were rejected by the student budget community. The students were told their paper was not eligible for school funding because "it is religious propaganda."
Attorney Kevin Theriot with the Alliance Defense Fund believes the school is engaging in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. "Incidentally," he says, "they were applying an OU policy that specifically prohibits use of student fees, if you're a student group, for what it terms religious services. So when they were denied, they contacted us, and we asked the university to reconsider their policy through a letter that was sent by the clients."
However, the university declined, saying that no discrimination had taken place. In response, the ADF filed the lawsuit on their clients' behalf.
Theriot says the university seems to be functioning under the false impression that religious speech is "somehow less protected than other types of speech -- especially if that religious speech is trying to convince somebody of your particular point of view, which is just ridiculous. That's exactly the type of speech that the First Amendment was designed to protect."
The attorney says American universities are supposed to be forums for the free exchange of ideas, but in the case of Thomas and Wicket's paper, OU is displaying anti-Christian bigotry in its attempt to prevent the students from exercising their right to free speech.
Theriot wants to see the University of Oklahoma's policy amended, not only for Thomas and Wickett, but for the entire student body.
Meanwhile, another on another American university campus, a professor is under fire for launching a verbal attack against a Christian student. According to a report in the News Observer, a student, identified only as Tim, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found himself singled out for hate speech by lecturer Elyse Crystall.
According to the Observer, after the young man told the literature and cultural diversity class that he opposed homosexuality, Crystall wrote an e-mail message to the students in which she said, "What we heard Thursday at the end of class constitutes hate speech and is completely unacceptable." The instructor went on to refer to Tim as a "white, heterosexual, Christian male" who "can feel entitled to make violent, heterosexist comments and not feel marked or threatened or vulnerable."
The report says Crystall has since apologized to the students, and the university says it is monitoring her class. But one congressman is demanding an investigation.
The North Carolina school's administration is not unfamiliar with such controversy. UNC-Chapel Hill is the same university that stirred debate a few years ago when it announced a pro-Islam reading assignment for freshmen students.
