Free speech replaced with forced speech at URI?
As we get ready to send child number one off to college, I wonder whether she will be checking her First Amendment rights at the door. The University of Rhode Island (URI) student newspaper, The Good 5 Cent Cigar, reports on a recent "ruling" by that school's student senate. The issue involves "free speech", or the lack thereof:
Senate punishes College Republicans for fraudulent WHAM scholarship ad
03/15/07 - The University of Rhode Island Student Senate denied the appeal of the College Republicans over a controversial scholarship at last night's meeting..The senate, along with College Republican Chairman Ryan Bilodeau, debated whether the "White Heterosexual American Male" scholarship violated the senate bylaws, which prohibit discrimination by any member group. However, the club never granted the scholarship to an applicant.
Part of the "punishment" meted out for the unauthorized use of "free speech" is a little "coerced speech" in an ironic twist that would almost be funny if it weren't so serious.
The Student Organization Advisory and Review Committee, chaired by Matt Yates, handed two punishments to the group. The first required the College Republicans to write a letter of apology to be printed in the Cigar.
In a press release issued Tuesday, entitled "First Amendment to University of Rhode Island Administration: Conservatives Need Not Apologize", the URI College Republicans state:
Kingston, R.I. – Tonight the University of Rhode Island (U.R.I.) College Republicans meet with the Student Senate to appeal its decision to censor and force speech upon the group. Last semester the U.R.I. College Republicans offered a satirical "White Heterosexual American Male Scholarship" to U.R.I. students to bring attention to the inherently racist policy of affirmative action..Months later the Student Organizations Advisory & Review Committee (SOARC) is unanimously demanding a pre-approved written apology and is requiring the group to receive permission for all programs it holds until next February..The scholarship was offered in satire, however, and was therefore never granted and/or distributed, and the group therefore contends that the scholarship was therefore completely legal in the eyes of the school and the law. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a national legal group whose mission it is to “defend and sustain individual rights at America's increasingly repressive and partisan colleges and universities,” sent a letter to the school in defense of the College Republicans with the promise that they are “committed to using all of our resources to seeing this matter through to a just and moral conclusion.”.At the SOARC Committee Meeting, one committee member compared the scholarship to a death threat with no action, and other members often intimidated Chairman Ryan Bilodeau with loaded political questions.."It is unfortunate that while attempting to bring the broader debate of affirmative action and freedom of speech to campus, members of the SOARC committee are censoring a group whose political convictions many of them disagree with, and are going even further by advocating forced speech in demanding that the Chairman of the group apologize for doing so," Bilodeau said. "At the University of Rhode Island, entering the free marketplace of ideas comes at a heavy price."
URI College Republicans chairman Ryan Bilodeau will join the 'Grok gang on our radio program, Meet the New Press, this Saturday. Check the podcast page next week to listen.
