Navigating the Free Speech Zone
Posted By iacpv on June 26, 2009
But what’s even more disturbing than the comical name, is the act itself and the fact that it’s taking place. At the University of West Virginia there are two spots, yep just two spots, at a school serving 23,000 students consisting of three campuses that are roughly four miles apart from each other, where students can wave their picket signs and chat,
“Hey, hey, ho, ho …”
The “zones” are about the size of a typical classroom. Can’t you just see WVU Administrators outside one warm Saturday morning with their Starbucks coffee, their measuring stick, duct tape, and chalk marking the borders, making the box where “free speech” can be, essentially, free?
I bet the Administrators thought they were doing something good—really good for the students, and even more for the concept of liberal education.
Like a bad cold, the idea has spread. The article ticks off examples of the same faulty concept being instituted at other schools.
Why are colleges and universities taking the drastic step of mapping out areas where students can vent and heaven forbid—experience the free exchange of ideas? Shouldn’t that ideal be a given on college campuses today?
“These students aren’t being put in a cheese box. No one is being precluded from speaking their mind,” said Sheldon E. Steinbach, general counsel of the American Council on Education, in the Washington Times article.
Excuse, me? Cheese box, moving box, call it what you will, but Mr. Steinbach you’ve got it all wrong. These students are, effectively, being told to mind their tongue. They are instructed on where their “soap box” can be placed—it’s either within the free speech square, or face disciplinary actions and maybe even expulsion.
It’s a sad, troubling development. If free speech zones are being deployed outside the student union building, library, wherever, it begs the question—what type of unwritten rules about what can and can’t be said are accepted with a wink and a nod inside the classroom?
Colleges are no longer utopian cities upon a hill where the free exchange of ideas and opinions can be hashed out. Instead, college administrators want to institute an organized, orderly atmosphere by designating areas where the exchange can take place. Fair enough, but do they know that comes with a large price tag? Debates, and heated passions and dissenting viewpoints—when being expressed—are not always cognizant of time and place, manners or feelings. They’re not meant to take place over high tea. The end result being: the more restrictions you place on free speech, the less likely it will occur. And that, to me, is entirely at odds with the concept of a liberal education.
Students be wary. The “thought” police or “speech” police might be instituting a “zone” at your school.
They’re rationing off boxes, spaces where your thoughts and opinions can be heard. If you step outside the box? Please, kindly keep your thoughts to yourself.