Santa Clara U. Bans ‘Degrading Language’ While Promising Free Expression
“It’s not bound by the First Amendment, yet its voluntary promises to students are a tacit endorsement of First Amendment standards.”
Shouldn’t higher education be one of the areas where free speech is absolute and cherished? So often, it is the opposite.
The College Fix reports:
University bans ‘degrading language’ while promising ‘greatest possible degree’ of free speech
Which is it going to be, Santa Clara University? Arbitrary and capricious regulation of what students can say, or open-ended encouragement to express themselves?
The Catholic school shows its double-mindedness in its 109-page student handbook, which bans “degrading language” (never defined) while promising the “greatest possible degree of freedom for individual choice and expression” – two pages apart.
It’s the Speech Code of the Month for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which says SCU has only itself to blame: It’s not bound by the First Amendment, yet its voluntary promises to students are a tacit endorsement of First Amendment standards.
Laura Beltz, senior program officer for policy reform, notes the “degrading” standard is “just plain impossible to enforce” because it could apply to anything: “Well-defined policies give a university a useful and clear guide when a free speech controversy hits, rather than leaving administrators to apply their own subjective standards or listen to the online mob.”
While it’s not governed by the student handbook, a recent controversy involving a campus safety officer’s display of a Blue Lives Matter emblem shows “the basic problem with attempts at evaluating degrading content,” Beltz says: “While some may find a Blue Lives Matter emblem offensive, others may feel the same way about a Black Lives Matter emblem.”
If it wants to keep implying that it observes First Amendment standards, Beltz says, the university needs to look at the Supreme Court’s rejection of a law banning trademark registration for terms that “disparage” … well, anything, even an Asian-American rock band’s self-deprecating name (“The Slants”).
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Comments
Needless to say this has simplified our decision when SCU ask alumni to donate….it will be a hard no.
They also are selling the new campus 1984 calendars.
DON’T BUY.
” promising the “greatest possible degree of freedom for individual choice and expression”
Well, so, free speech is like the “all you can eat shrimp dinner”: because, you get three shrimp, and, that’s all you can eat.
All that’s needed to bridge the gap here is to define “the greatest possible degree of freedom for individual choice and expression” as, at our sole discression, “all the speech we decide is not ‘degrading’.”
BUT, you don’t get to find out if your expression is in violation until after you express it. AND, we will not be bound to precedent: we can change whatever we find “degrading” at will. Even if we previously found it acceptable.
The real question is, is this stuff actually written by lawyers and, if so, how did they ever pass the logic questions on the LSAT?
I wonder if The Slants would change their name to The Vergules and wonder if anyone notices?