CAMPUS

Student Censored For Pamphleteering at Penn. Community College

FIRE reports on yet another case of a student being harassed by school administrators for advocating for concealed carry of handguns on campus. The Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania has threatened disciplinary action against one of its students, Christine Brashier, for handing out pamphlets and trying to start a campus chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

The school deans said Brashier was prohibited from “soliciting” her materials or even discussing concealed carry on campus. They even went so far as to order her to destroy all of her pamphlets.

Liberty U. Not Quite Living Up To Name

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Liberty University, a private Christian school, has revoked recognition of its student Democrat club. The university administration sent the club a nice letter, which reads in part:

“The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the ‘LGBT’ agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.),” according to the newspaper. The Democratic group at Liberty has expressed opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage.”

Shocker: J-Schools Not Ideologically Diverse

University of Oregon grad student Dan Lawton has a good article on his personal blog about the lack of ideological diversity in journalism schools and the potential problems that causes. The article is part of an ongoing project by Lawton on diversity in higher education. I’ve been interviewed for it a couple of times, and there will be a short documentary forthcoming. All in all, it promises to be very interesting.

Using his public records kung fu, Lawton discovers that, of the thirty two full-time faculty in the UO journalism school, none are registered Republicans. Even adding in adjunct faculty, there are only two Republicans.

Rep. Sanchez Responds to Criticism

Representative Linda Sanchez has an article over at the Huffington Post responding to criticism of her proposed bill, the Megan Meiers Cyberbullying Prevention Act. She starts off with this nice piece of obfuscation:

“If you were walking down the street and saw someone harassing a child, would you just walk by and look the other way? If that person was telling the child the world would be better off if they just killed themselves, would you ignore it?”

Well … no, but my response probably wouldn’t be to craft an overbroad, facially unconstitutional bill that targets far more than just “cyberbullying.” But then again, I’m not Rep. Sanchez. (For you critical thinkers out there, Sanchez’s rhetorical question is called a false dichotomy.)

Spreading the Grade Point Average

The Young America’s Foundation recently sponsored an amusing video contest, in which conservative college students try to get their peers to sign a fake petition for equal distribution of grade point averages.

Most of the students are, of course, mortified by the idea (”but I worked hard for my grades!”), but when asked if they support wealth redistribution, they invariably say yes. It’s telling of the cognitive dissonance that students must have to keep up to pass the average sociology class.

Unconstitutional “Cyberbullying” Bill Proposed in House

A bill sponsored by Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-California) has been proposed in the House of Representatives that would make “cyberbullying,” as it’s been coined, illegal.

The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, named after a 13 year-old girl who committed suicide after falling victim to a cruel Myspace prank, would make it a felony to transmit “in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.”

As is wont to happen when lawmakers grandstand on a current issue, the proposed bill is a legal train wreck – a half-baked piece of legislation that, if it weren’t almost guaranteed to be stricken down as unconstitutional, would be seriously dangerous to free speech.

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.

More Newspaper Dumping Across the Country

Last week the Chronicle of Higher Education dug up a few more cases of newspaper dumping on college campuses. For example, at Ohio Wesleyan University, an admissions official trashed hundreds of copies of the The Transcript, which contained a front-page article on the university’s drinking traditions, because he felt it cast the campus in a negative light. Sorry, but that’s not how freedom of the press works.

All of these incidents I’ve been blogging about are all the more shameful, considering that universities are supposed to be vanguards of free thought and expression.

No Freedom of Speech at UMass Amherst

I previously wrote about a terrible case of newspaper theft at UMass Amherst, where copies of the conservative paper, the Minuteman, were stolen right in front of police. The police and administration did nothing to stop or punish the theft, apparently seeing nothing wrong with suppressing free speech.

Well, the story keeps getting worse. FIRE reports that the Student Government Association (SGA) at UMass Amherst, acting with blatant disregard for the First Amendment, has threatened to shut down the paper unless it apologizes to the woman who stole its issues. (She was mocked in the issue in question – apparently the impetus for her juvenile actions.) On top of that, the SGA refused to hear a resolution put forward by a student senator that would rescind the illegal action. The senator was then removed by police after he protested the SGA’s violation of its own bylaws (not to mention the Constitution).

Bills to Allow Concealed Carry on Campus Moving Forward

Legislation is moving forward in Texas and Missouri that would allow concealed carry of handguns by properly registered students on university campuses. Inside Higher Ed reports that the Texas bill appears to have majority support in the House of Representatives, while the Missouri House has already passed its version of the bill.