by Jonathan Butcher
February 11, 2019
A few weeks ago, I talked to Clemson University student
Morgan Bailey, chair of the local chapter of Young Americans for Freedom. In
2018, her group set up a pro-life display, with signs and white crosses marking
“the lives lost to abortion,” but the display was vandalized. At the time, the
incident received little attention; CampusReform covered
the story, but local South Carolina media largely ignored the news.
The re-introduction of a legislative proposal to protect
free speech on South Carolina’s college campuses, modeled after the Goldwater
Institute’s work with Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy
Center, Jim Manley of the Pacific Legal Foundation, and myself, has given
Morgan’s experience and those like hers the attention they are due.
As I wrote in the Charleston Post and Courier in late January, “over the past three years, students and faculty on both sides of political debates have had their voices silenced. Some have even been physically threatened because of their beliefs.” While cameras captured the vandalism at Clemson, the perpetrators were not found, and the university did not issue any consequences.
Stories like
this one are no longer a surprise. From invited
speakers being chased off of campus to college
presidents being shouted
down, disrupting another’s right to be heard has become an
altogether too common occurrence at universities around the country.
South
Carolina’s neighbors to the north and south have taken action in recent years
to protect free expression on public college campuses. North
Carolina adopted key provisions from the Goldwater Institute’s
proposal in 2017, and Georgia
lawmakers adopted similar ideas just last year (policymakers in Arizona
and Wisconsin
have also added these protections to state law or state university governing board
policies).
Again, from my
piece in the Post and Courier: “South Carolina officials are taking notice.
Legislators are considering a proposal to protect free speech on campus that
requires public colleges and universities to adopt a mission statement in favor
of free speech and include a review of the statement during freshman
orientation.” State Sen. Larry Grooms (R-Berkeley), the sponsor of the
proposal, cited Morgan’s experience when talking with The
State, the Columbia, South Carolina, newspaper. In a confusing
headline, the paper titled the story “Should colleges have less say over
student free speech? SC lawmakers think so,” obscuring the fact that public
spaces such as sidewalks and lawns on public college campuses should be open to
anyone lawfully present there. While schools must maintain order so that
students can study, students should not have to leave their First Amendment
rights at home when they leave for college.
Sen. Grooms’
proposal is not an effort to undermine state colleges and universities—it’s an
attempt to prevent censorship. Morgan’s experience is one of nearly two dozen
such incidents involving free expression at Clemson alone dating back to 2006,
as Stanley Kurtz documented in National
Review Online last year.
Grooms told The State that the bill will do away
with so-called “free speech zones,” typically small areas of campus that
schools designate for distributing flyers or holding demonstrations. The proposal
also says that students and faculty are free to write or speak on issues that
are important to them regardless of whether the school has adopted a specific
stance on that subject. Schools can also consider a range of disciplinary
sanctions—including suspension and expulsion—if a student repeatedly violates
someone else’s attempt to be heard. Students accused of such violations would
have due process protections so that they would be informed of the charges
against them and could find representation as needed.
Proposals
like these should restore free speech on campus, allowing those on both sides
of an issue to be heard. As I wrote in the Post
and Courier, “It is not a university’s role to protect students from new
ideas, offensive or otherwise. Allowing one student to silence another because
the former takes offense does neither student any favors.”
Jonathan Butcher is a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute.
