How much free speech on campus?
@flowerchilde (12529)
United States
April 22, 2009 2:05pm CST
This is disturbing, but it's far from the first report like this I've heard:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Education/Default.aspx?id=496692
An organization that defends individual liberty in education is taking issue with the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Last month UMass-Amherst came under fire for its treatment of conservative columnist Don Feder. Feder was invited by a conservative school club to give a presentation, but was unable to do so after student protestors heckled him off stage while university officials stood by. Now another censorship issue is brewing on the campus after student protestors stole copies of a conservative newspaper and blocked its distribution on campus.
Adam Kissel is the director of the individual rights defense program at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE.
"The student who came in for the most ridicule and negative press actually stood on a stack of papers and wouldn't let people have access to them. And then when a police detective came over, the police detective finally persuaded the student to stop standing on the papers," he explains. "Another student who was then trying to distribute the papers was about to start doing that and then she and some others stole the papers back from them right out of his hands while the police officer watched."
Kissel says the paper was then forced to censor and then apologize after it ran a piece mocking the student who stole the papers. In response, a student senator tried to place a resolution that would have repealed the censorship and forced apology.
Adam Kissel (FIRE)"And he wasn't even allowed to get his resolution onto the floor," Kissel adds. "Instead, the speaker of the student government at UMass-Amherst had him ejected from the student government meeting."
According to Kissel, the student senator told them that if he was to be ejected, they had to hold a vote first. In response, the speaker of the student senate called the police and had the senator removed. Kissel believes everyone needs to know that UMass-Amherst is not a school that respects a person's First Amendment rights.
Weren't the universities well known as bastions of free speech and dissent? What in the world has happened do you think? Would the same treatment happen to a popular liberal campus paper or columnist?
2 people like this
6 responses
@celticeagle (189838)
• Boise, Idaho
23 Apr 09
Once things like this are allowed to happen they snowball and become prolific. This all so bizarre. Hard to believe that this sort of thing can happen in the US of A. This reminds me of Berkeley when I was in my teens. Scarey! Very scarey! Liberal campus may have a better chance. Each side has a right to their opinion and grieved me much to hear of this. I don't know what woud be a good tack to take at this point. Wish I did have answers.
1 person likes this
@flowerchilde (12529)
• United States
7 May 09
"snowball" - that's eXactly how I think of it!
1 person likes this
@PrarieStyle (2486)
• United States
23 Apr 09
I'm not a bit surprised look how Barny Frank treated a Harvard Student when he asked a simple question we would all like to know the answer to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pk--Ox49L0
1 person likes this
@flowerchilde (12529)
• United States
7 May 09
It's ok, it seems to be totally rude to some.. And to constantly simply dismiss them and the viewpoint they have, no matter how many have it! (Is it possible they are just dismissed as ignorant, and that is somehow an enlightened view??
)
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@flowerchilde (12529)
• United States
7 May 09
I think it's a rolling snowball more in some quarters than others.. It's seems to me like a new politically correct bias and bigotry.. the human race keeps falling for this one over and over.. only now many such ones think they are enlightened. To me it's a real twilight zone..
@James72 (26790)
• Australia
22 Apr 09
This IS disturbing, yes! I'm not going to profess to be someone that knows much about the First Amendment of the US in any great detail, but you'd think that a University Campus of all places would be very liberal and open to all voices being heard! This isn't just about restricting an individual either, as it's a case of restricting other people's chance to make an educated decision with ALL the facts as well. 
It seems to me that misguided and biased politics mixed with a negatively passionate mob mentality have overshadowed all else.
It seems to me that misguided and biased politics mixed with a negatively passionate mob mentality have overshadowed all else. 1 person likes this
@flowerchilde (12529)
• United States
7 May 09
[i]" It seems to me that misguided and biased politics mixed with a negatively passionate mob mentality have overshadowed all else."
[/i]
I think that's a good way to say it! seems to me, like this sort of thing is growing and growing and I think it is definitely not good!!
