California college student teaches school $50,000 lesson on Constitution

[Adam]

California college student teaches school $50,000 lesson on Constitution

A California college student who was blocked last year from handing out copies of the Constitution gave his school a lesson in civics and the law, winning a $50,000 settlement and an agreement to revise its speech codes.

Robert Van Tuinen, 26, settled with Modesto Junior College just five months after his run-in with school officials on Sept. 17 – National Constitution Day. Van Tuinen said he’s more excited about getting the school to revise its speech codes, which previously confined the First Amendment to a small area students had to sign up to use.

[....]

Eventually, the police officer escorts Van Tuinen into an administrative office, where an unidentified woman shows him a binder with rules she says govern free speech on campus. She explains that there is a designated place “in front of the student center, in that little cement area,” where free expression is allowed, but then notes that two people are already using it.

The episode caught the attention of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which, together with a Washington law firm, took his case to federal court in the Eastern District of California. But by then, school officials had already started backpedaling.

Good for him! These college "speech codes" and the like are getting completely out of hand. It's high time someone slapped the universities' hands a bit.

I hope that this sends a big, BIG message to the folks at Mississippi State as well as the feds. It's well-past time for the American people to stand up to this tyranny.

[Gingersnap]

Schools (at every level) have been getting big, expensive lessons about freedom of speech, religious liberty, and so on for years and they keep repeating the same blunders over and over.

Good for this guy, though!

[Adam]

Schools (at every level) have been getting big, expensive lessons about freedom of speech, religious liberty, and so on for years and they keep repeating the same blunders over and over.

Good for this guy, though!

Clearly not big enough or expensive enough. It's obvious that there needs to be some truly crippling settlement/award hung around their necks before they finally wise up.

[Novaheart]

Good for him! These college "speech codes" and the like are getting completely out of hand. It's high time someone slapped the universities' hands a bit.

I hope that this sends a big, BIG message to the folks at Mississippi State as well as the feds. It's well-past time for the American people to stand up to this tyranny.

The problem is that there are those who claim to "only want to assert constitutional rights" who object to any rules which will stop them from harassing others. For example, I know I have read on conservative forums posts by those who simply refuse to understand or accept that while state college dormitories are publicly owned, they are not the public square and gay people who live in those dorm don't have to put up with abusive behavior by people who feel compelled to air their religious bigotry against gay people. Many of these same people are so thoroughly ignorant and blind to their prejudice that they do not or refuse to understand that a person being gay is not an attack on a bigot, but that a bigot's name calling or offensive posturing is an attack on a gay person in the place where he resides. The bigot is free to stand outside the student union with his Jesus Doesn't Love You poster, but he's not free to post it in a shared residential facility like a dormitory.

[Adam]

The problem is that there are those who claim to "only want to assert constitutional rights" who object to any rules which will stop them from harassing others. For example, I know I have read on conservative forums posts by those who simply refuse to understand or accept that while state college dormitories are publicly owned, they are not the public square and gay people who live in those dorm don't have to put up with abusive behavior by people who feel compelled to air their religious bigotry against gay people. Many of these same people are so thoroughly ignorant and blind to their prejudice that they do not or refuse to understand that a person being gay is not an attack on a bigot, but that a bigot's name calling or offensive posturing is an attack on a gay person in the place where he resides. The bigot is free to stand outside the student union with his Jesus Doesn't Love You poster, but he's not free to post it in a shared residential facility like a dormitory.

I've never seen that argument, though I won't deny that it exists. People will, after all, make all sorts of absurd arguments.

In the case of the dorm, though, there are already plenty of laws to address that. If someone in that dorm assaults or otherwise prevents that gay person from expressing themselves, then they should get arrested and prosecuted under the applicable law(s). Name-calling, though, is not a violation of the law (at least under reasonable law). I got called everything but a white man when I was one of two white people on a dormitory floor my first semester as a freshman. Had I responded in kind to "honkey," "cracker," etc. for the "crime" of walking down the hallway and out the door to class, though, it would have meant expulsion from the school, and similar situations have resulted in actual prosecution for "intimidation" under the law. I guarandamntee you that today, a (relatively) lone straight person on a dorm floor full of gay people who had to walk a gauntlet of people shouting "breeder" at him today who responded in kind with "faggot" would, at the very least, be severely disciplined by the school, if not expelled, and could very well be prosecuted under the law in some places.

I can certainly attest that in 1990 and 1991, my first semester in college, I endured an unending barrage of harassment for being a straight, white, Christian male who did not agree with homosexuality. Mine was literally state-sanctioned harassment when I was fool enough and ignorant enough to dare to say that I did not embrace homosexuality in our mandatory pre-freshman "orientation" session. I was forced to endure "visits" in my dorm room from the little RA mafia that sought to ensure that I did not think un-approved thoughts about homosexuality and homosexuals. I never threatened anyone, and I made that abundantly clear from the start, and even argued (successfully, judging from the responses of others) that I was entitled to think what I wanted to think, so long as my thoughts did not translate into any sort of harm to others, but all that did was give the tolerance bullies ammunition (and just cause, per the speech code) to hassle me perpetually during my "induction period" of my freshman year.



In any case, no one was harassing anyone here. It was a guy interfering with no one who was daring to do something so nefarious as to hand out copies of the United States Constitution. He was blocking no one's motion. He was keeping no one from getting where they were going. He was not stopping anyone. He was merely offering copies of the Constitution to those who would like to have one. If he had been handing out copies of Brokeback Mountain, he would have been celebrated as a hero. Instead, he was handing out un-approved literature, and the school can't have students out there thinking un-approved thoughts like what the Constitution means.

[JB]

The bigot is free to stand outside the student union with his Jesus Doesn't Love You poster, but he's not free to post it in a shared residential facility like a dormitory.

Take down the rainbows too.

[Billy Jingo]

Back, a long long time ago, the campus of a college I attended (UTA) had something similar. I never really thought it was that big of a deal. It was mostly used for proselytizing so I guess that was better than being randomly accosted.

I can see where some guy passing out [insert anything here] might be frowned upon.