CAMPUS

Update on UMass Amherst

The UMass Amherst administration has wisely rejected the student government’s decision to censor the conservative paper on campus, The Minuteman.

“As the enactment does not reflect an appreciation of the Silent Majority’s [the student organization that publishes the paper] constitutional right to the exercise of free speech, I reject it altogether and recommend that it be rescinded in its entirety,” wrote Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Life Esther Terry.

The administration might also punish one of the people who flagrantly stole copies of the paper.

The past few weeks have been a PR disaster for UMass Amherst with regards to the First Amendment. For example, Cathy Young has a column over at Reason lambasting the university for its recent treatment of speaker Don Feder, a conservative journalist.

As Feder began to speak, the protesters hissed and hooted. At one point, a group of them noisily turned around their chairs to face away from the podium. Finally, a woman in the audience interrupted Feder, rising to shout out a statement about the murder of a transgendered African-American woman. Feder asked the police to escort her out; from the video, it appears that she walked out on her own, to the cheers of her fellow protesters, and even paused to wave to her friends and yell a derogatory comment to Feder.

[...]

A genuine liberal would be embarrassed by these actions. But in some quarters, intolerance of dissent is now a cause for self-congratulation. When Feder remarked that he had spoken on numerous college campuses and had never experienced anything of the sort, one student could be heard shouting, “Go UMass!”

It’s good to see the university finally do the right thing, but with problems like these one wonders how much the students, faculty and administration really value freedom of speech.