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The Daily OrangeSU supports free speech rights for everyone except students
By Vinny Napolitano
Posted: 9/18/07, 8:33 PM EST Section: Opinion
This week, our community will see members of the Syracuse University administration lauding the opening of Newhouse III, complete with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution spread across its exterior. While it is hard to deny the beauty of the new building, one has to wonder why on earth SU would ever want to display the very amendment that it has shown little regard for time and time again.
For the past few years, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) identified SU as a Red Light school, which is a university that "has at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech." The organization, whose mission is to monitor the activities of universities across the country, has watched SU's actions since 2000. Almost all of the violations of free speech rights that FIRE cites came after 2005 - less than one year after Chancellor Nancy Cantor came to power.
Those violations include the school's "bias-related incident" policies, which include "non-threatening name-calling," a sexual harassment policy that goes so far as to restrict what T-shirts a student may wear and punishes "heterosexist" comments that are not in favor of homosexuality - regardless of any religious beliefs about homosexual behavior.
It is hard to deny that Cantor's administration is no friend to freedom of speech. What is shocking is how far this infringement on the rights of SU students goes.
This issue is highlighted in an article from the Student Press Law Center (SPLC), an advocacy group for free press rights on college campuses, which recounted the HillTV controversy of 2005. This infamous decision was the one in which Cantor used unilateral power to shut down HillTV as a result of one show airing politically-incorrect material.
SPLC noted that while SU is a private institution and thus "does not have the same constitutional limitations in censoring student media found at public institutions," it does not make censorship of the student press any less of a problem and still restricts the First Amendment rights of the student media.
The administration didn't stop there - it entered the virtual world. In February 2006, The Post-Standard reported that four students at SU were placed on probation for creating a Facebook group criticizing their teaching assistant for her teaching methods. While the comments made about the TA were certainly harsh, the fact that SU officials punished students for their personal opinions on a non-SU Web site was, to say the least, an overstep in administrative power that yet again took away from the constitutional rights of SU students.
Before students buy the hype and believe that SU's administrators care deeply about the First Amendment, they should carefully examine the precedent laid by our chancellor and her inner-circle over the past three years. Above all, they must remember that at the end of the First Amendment on Newhouse III's exterior there is an invisible - but important - asterisk regarding SU student rights.
Vinny Napolitano is a biweekly columnist for The Daily Orange. He can be reached at vsnapoli@syr.edu.
For the past few years, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) identified SU as a Red Light school, which is a university that "has at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech." The organization, whose mission is to monitor the activities of universities across the country, has watched SU's actions since 2000. Almost all of the violations of free speech rights that FIRE cites came after 2005 - less than one year after Chancellor Nancy Cantor came to power.
Those violations include the school's "bias-related incident" policies, which include "non-threatening name-calling," a sexual harassment policy that goes so far as to restrict what T-shirts a student may wear and punishes "heterosexist" comments that are not in favor of homosexuality - regardless of any religious beliefs about homosexual behavior.
It is hard to deny that Cantor's administration is no friend to freedom of speech. What is shocking is how far this infringement on the rights of SU students goes.
This issue is highlighted in an article from the Student Press Law Center (SPLC), an advocacy group for free press rights on college campuses, which recounted the HillTV controversy of 2005. This infamous decision was the one in which Cantor used unilateral power to shut down HillTV as a result of one show airing politically-incorrect material.
SPLC noted that while SU is a private institution and thus "does not have the same constitutional limitations in censoring student media found at public institutions," it does not make censorship of the student press any less of a problem and still restricts the First Amendment rights of the student media.
The administration didn't stop there - it entered the virtual world. In February 2006, The Post-Standard reported that four students at SU were placed on probation for creating a Facebook group criticizing their teaching assistant for her teaching methods. While the comments made about the TA were certainly harsh, the fact that SU officials punished students for their personal opinions on a non-SU Web site was, to say the least, an overstep in administrative power that yet again took away from the constitutional rights of SU students.
Before students buy the hype and believe that SU's administrators care deeply about the First Amendment, they should carefully examine the precedent laid by our chancellor and her inner-circle over the past three years. Above all, they must remember that at the end of the First Amendment on Newhouse III's exterior there is an invisible - but important - asterisk regarding SU student rights.
Vinny Napolitano is a biweekly columnist for The Daily Orange. He can be reached at vsnapoli@syr.edu.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Jonathan Smyth
posted 9/19/07 @ 8:20 PM EST
It's a crazy world when the republicans become more liberal than the "liberals"
There's a lot of things I'd love to leave on this comment, but hell I'd probably get expelled -- so pretend I spoke my mind. (Continued…)
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