Posts in "free speech"

Iowa State University Free Speech Wall

Quinn Murphy
Apr 28, 2013 at 7:41 PM
By Quinn Murphy

Morgan and Adam by Free Speech Wall

VEISHEA is undeniably the largest celebration at Iowa State University every year. It stands for the five colleges at the University at the time of its founding in 1922: Veterinary Medicine, Engineering, Industrial Science, Home Economics, and Agriculture. Every year during VEISHEA, ISU plays host to music artists, celebrities, United States presidents, and some of the best cherry pies you've ever tasted. This year, however, something new was causing a buzz during VEISHEA: the Young Americans for Liberty Free Speech Wall.

Free Speech Wall Full

For three days between April 16 and April 20, our chapter featured a Free Speech Wall in front of Parks Library and in central campus at VEISHEA Village. We encouraged students, faculty, and the general public to write whatever they wanted to on the Free Speech Wall. Many people were confused by the idea of writing whatever they wanted, but several brave people came forward to express themselves on the wall.

The Irony of "Free Speech" at Montclair State

Ksenia Lebedeva
Mar 23, 2013 at 10:48 AM
By Ksenia Lebedeva

Peter Bonilla of FIRE at Montclair State University

The story begins in early March of this year, when Montclair State University's (NJ) YAL chapter, of which I am president, began advertising for our Free Speech speaker. The event was meant to be in reaction to the story of MSU graduate student and YAL member Joe Aziz, which made national news after Foundation for Individual Rights in Education stepped in.

Long story short, Aziz was slapped with an unconstitutional gag order by MSU's administration after writing a rude joke in a YouTube comment in response to the video posted by the girlfriend of the young man who heckled YAL's guest speaker Steve Lonegan, back in September 2012. The gag order stated that he was not to speak to the young woman nor to speak about her. Aziz broke the terms of this gag order by joking about the situation in a private Facebook group, where one of the other members printed out his posts and showed them to the school administration. Aziz was suspended for six months, and would have stayed that way if FIRE had not raised a media storm in national and international publications. Under so much press scrutiny, MSU backed off and rescinded the suspension, allowing Aziz to re-enlist in all his classes and clearing his record.

To raise awareness of free speech on college campuses, YAL hosted FIRE's Associate Director Peter Bonilla as a guest speaker, with Aziz making the opening remarks. This event took place on Thursday, March 7, the week before spring break.

Meet the Executive Board of YAL at The College of New Jersey: Important Update

Hannah Park
Oct 30, 2012 at 5:41 PM
By Hannah Park

YAL E-Board

Here's a rather striking update from the Young Americans for Liberty chapter at The College of New Jersey. From left-to-right, we have Kevin Adams (Outreach Coordinator,) Gregory Burr (SFL Campus Coordinator and YAL activist,) Hannah Park (President and Founder,) and Marilyn Guerra (Vice President).

Recently, we have had many meetings with the Student Government committee and have run into ridiculous free-speech issues that have infringed on both our personal liberties and rights as students and as an organization. The committee deemed that we were too similar to the Students for Liberty group on campus, and because SFL was established just last semester on campus, they could not grant both organizations official establishment on campus. They stated that if we had come before SFL, they would have readily allowed us to go through the system with ease.

That Time I Wasn't Allowed to Exercise My Right to Free Speech

Alex Sullivan
Oct 24, 2012 at 1:07 PM
By Alex Sullivan

Today, I was passing out flyers with some other people for a speaker event that I was helping host with a few other people. Everyone passing the flyers out are members of our Young Americans for Liberty chapter here at Georgia Tech, but this event was non-related to YAL events, so we were acting individually.  

While passing out flyers, we were approached by a lady named Beverly Peace, the Campus Space Manager.  She asked us if we were with a student organization.  Because we weren't acting under YAL, but as individual students, I replied "No."

I believe that she then assumed that we weren't students at all, so she told us we couldn't be standing where we were and passing out flyers.  If we wanted to hand out flyers, she said, we had to go to the designated free speech zone.

I clarified that we were, in fact, students at the Institute, because I was sure that the designated free speech area was for non-students.  She proceeded to ask us why we hadn't reserved space (or a table) for this flyer distribution.

UNC-Chapel Hill YAL fights speech codes with FIRE

David Deerson
Oct 11, 2012 at 3:58 PM
By David Deerson

The UNC Young Americans for Liberty had an outstanding Constitution Week, consisting of speakers, demonstrations, campus outreach, and culminating in a filming of the Stossel Show, which aired on Fox Business Network on Thursday, September 27th. 

Since UNC was recently demoted to a red-light rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), we decided to focus our energies on the First Amendment of the Constitution in particular and the ideals of free expression in general. 

On Constitution Day (Monday, September 17th), we went out on the quad to hand out Constitutions and talk about free speech. Some of our members were wearing UNC-brand duct tape over their mouths, to symbolize the restrictions that UNC places on our freedom of expression. The duct-tape gimmick was a huge success, inspiring an enormous amount of curiosity among passers-by. We handed out all of the constitutions that YAL sent us in the mail, as well as a few Cato-published copies we had left over from last fall’s Constitution activism.

tape

In addition to the founding documents, we handed out flyers informing students that Robert Shibley, executive vice president of FIRE, would be speaking on campus that evening about “How UNC Stifles Free Speech, and What You Can Do About It.” These were the same flyers that we had plastered campus with the week before, making our model Audrey somewhat of a campus celebrity! Apparently, people still come up to her and ask “Aren’t you the girl with the duct-tape from all those flyers?"

St. Cloud State Constitution Week

Jacob Thomfohrda
Oct 6, 2012 at 2:44 PM
By Jacob Thomfohrda

free speech wall 2

Last Thursday, St. Cloud State students exercised their First Amendment rights at YAL's free speech wall.  Despite barely having a voice due to a severe cold, some of our chapter members as well as myself preached constitutional rights and gave out constitutions to our fellow Huskies.  After receiving a Constitution, they had the opportunity to write whatever they would like on our free speech wall.

free speech wall 1 

FIRE and NC State Work Together and Drop "Civility" Mandate

Anthony Rodriguez
Sep 7, 2012 at 1:17 PM
By Anthony Rodriguez

imageKudos to YAL member Derek Spicer for contacting FIRE and taking action to promote free speech at his school!

From FIRE:

Last year, students living in NC State residence halls were subject to a civility statement requiring students to "speak to each other in a civil manner" and prohibiting the display of items that might be "disrespectful" or "hurtful." After the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) wrote to NC State pointing out the First Amendment problems posed by the policy, NC State revised it for this year, making it clear that freedom of expression is paramount. 

Derek Spicer contacted FIRE last year, notifying them of this terrible mandate. After FIRE contacted the school, they announced that the policy was under review.  Spicer recently notified FIRE that the policy had changed for the 2012-2013 school year.

Read the full press release here.

Milton, Mill, and Chicken

Hans Schulzke
Jul 28, 2012 at 2:42 PM
By Hans Schulzke

The year is 2012, and, shocking though it ought to be, there are still major public figures who don’t believe in the freedom to express your opinion without government reprisal. 

The crisis in free speech was precipitated when Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy was asked about his company’s support for “traditional family” organizations. He responded, “Guilty as charged.” Further scrutiny of Chick-fil-A’s charitable donations found that over the last 10 years, the company has funneled as much as $10 million to organizations that oppose same-sex marriage.  

The response to what some call bigotry has been intense. Many are calling for boycotts of the franchise. Others are calling for government sanctions against the company. According to the Chicago Sun, Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel vowed to block the company’s expansion in Chicago, saying on Wednesday that “Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values.” He continued:

What the CEO has said as it relates to gay marriage and gay couples is not what I believe, but more importantly, it’s not what the people of Chicago believe. We just passed legislation as it relates to civil union and my goal and my hope … is that we now move on recognizing gay marriage. I do not believe that the CEO’s comments…reflect who we are as a city.

Boston mayor Tom Menino, the first mayor to suggest he might block the franchise,  sent a letter to Dan Cathy after hearing Cathy’s comments and learning that Chick-fil-A was looking for a location to open a branch in Boston. Menino told Cathy, “There is no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it.”

San Francisco mayor Edwin Lee has suggested that he might take the same stance as Emmanuel and Menino. 

Without taking a position on the issue of same-sex marriage, this idea of government retaliation for free speech needs to be addressed. 

Congrats to the UC YAL chapter on a win for free speech!

Mary-Ann Ionascu
Jun 13, 2012 at 4:06 PM
By Mary-Ann Ionascu

It all started when the University of Cincinnati chapter was trying to collect signatures for a right-to-work law in Ohio.

Unfortunately, their campus restricted them to a "free speech" area, in a tiny fraction of the campus, where they were only able to talk to six students when they tried gathering signatures there. Other public areas of the campus were only available on 5 to 15 days notice only with the approval of UC officials.  

They went to the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati with legal help from the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, and filed a lawsuit against the university in February. Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black ruled that the University of Cincinnati violated the First Amendment by restricting student political speech to a certain area and requiring prior notification and permission. 

The judge issued an injunction that says that UC may not require the students to register in advance to gather petitions, may not keep them out of several major areas where students gather, may not require advance notice for all forms of demonstrations, picketing and rallies, and may not place restrictions on student speech on campus sidewalks, the Main street area, or the designated Free Speech Area unless that restriction is "individually and narrowly tailored to serve a compelling University interest".

You can read the media's coverage of this story here, here, and here.

Congrats again to the UC chapter for all their hard work and success in their fight for free speech!

BGSU TSA Protest: "Checking your explosive personality!"

Chance Stoodt
May 1, 2012 at 4:39 PM
By Chance Stoodt

BGSU TSA

Last Friday, BGSU's YAL chapter finally took part in the Government Gone Wild: Spring Break with the TSA protest! Sam Link, our TSA Agent, stopped people passing by or before entering the building behind us with phrases like, "Excuse me miss, as a matter of national security, I'm going to have to check you out due to your explosive personality!"

We had quite a few people express personal stories of their dealings with the TSA and even more ask us what the TSA actually has the power to do. We made sure to provide them with YAL's 'Know Your Rights' pamphlets paired with flyer advertisements for our club. Unfortunately, we only received three signees and tabled for a limited amount of time because of a protest next to us.

A neighborhood evangelist travels to campus sometimes 3 times a week to preach to passersby. He often condemns students because of how they're dressed or assumes that they dabble in drug and alcohol consumption. Although he has been doing this for years, students are getting tired of it. While he was there yesterday, a student came out with a petition and a sign that read, "Sign this petition to ban this guy from campus!" Of course, the language of the petition read much differently; its intent was to curb free speech on campus and limit the already tight free-speech zones. I argued with the circulator for about 30 minutes before he decided to just leave, but not before he got several pages worth of signees. One group of girls walked up and asked to sign the petition and when the circulator recommended they read the petition language before signing, one girl in the group suggested the sign was enough to get her signature. Unfortunately, these students were completely ignorant of what they were doing and I told the circulator that if he follows through and achieves school policy changes, he can expect a fight from us and F.I.R.E..