Four students faced serious backlash and threats of disciplinary action last Tuesday for distributing copies of the U.S. Constitution outside a designated "free speech zone" at Southern Oregon University, according to Campus Reform.
A group of students, all affiliated with Students for Concealed Carry, were repeatedly condemned and threatened by multiple school officials and campus cops while they were attempting to gather signatures for a petition to end the taxpayer-funded school's restrictive speech policies, which allots students with less than 1 percent of campus area for the right to exercise free speech, Campus Reform said.
"While it is lawful for the university to maintain policies prohibiting activities which genuinely disrupt the educational process, restricting speech as acutely as SOU has by instituting and upholding the free speech zone is grossly more broad than necessary to ensure the educational process is not interrupted," SCC member Stephanie Keaveney said.
SCC is a nonpartisan student organization that advocates for concealed carry gun rights on college campuses. On Tuesday, the group was situated in a "residential area" known to have close proximity to residence halls, according to The Daily Caller.
Most of the school administrators and police officers asked the group, who were standing alongside a sidewalk, to move their campaign to a different area of campus or face punishment. Some even resorted to "personal attacks," according to Campus Reform.
"I would very much like you to leave, if you would, please, because the students have the right to be able to come by here without you guys, you know, invading their space and asking them to do something," Tim Robitz, Director of University Housing, can be heard telling the students in an exclusive video obtained by Campus Reform.
In the interest of fair play, Robitz encouraged the group to offer students the university's side of the "free speech" debate in order for them to make an aware decision.
"Well, I just think if you're going to ask someone to sign a petition, it's always helpful if you're explaining both sides of the petition - why the policy exists is certainly useful as opposed to saying 'we want this,'" Robitz can be heard arguing in the video.
"We have our free speech zone. I understand that you may not like it, but that's where it is," Allyson Beck, SOU's family housing coordinator, told the students in the video.
As the day's events unfolded, the group was informed by the campus police that a student had complained of feeling uncomfortable due to the protest. Members of SCC, however, told Campus Reform that they had not received any such complaint.
"We encountered wild accusations that because the event was affiliated with SCC, there was legitimate fear for the imminent danger of students on campus," Keaveney told Campus Reform after the incident. "Administrators accused us of causing an immediate panic for the safety of students in the face of gun violence, or the promotion of such."
"[S]tudents on this campus were in no way framing themselves to be a legitimate threat to safety or inciting unlawful behavior," Keaveney continued. "This action was only related to SCC in that its members on this campus believe in order to fight for our second amendment rights we must first be free to exercise our first amendment rights."
"Caging students in censorship zones flies in the face of the First Amendment and undermines the reason for education," David Hacker, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, told Campus Reform. "Colleges and universities are and should be the marketplace of ideas, and the Constitution protects the speech rights of everyone, not just groups or students that a few university officials personally choose."
Coping with the repercussions of free speech on a campus was the main issue for Robitz, but he was willing to have an open conversation about it, he said.
"If you're asking me if I support it, I don't think I could say yes or no at this point because clearly there's a number of reasons why it exists and I think we need to look at all those - good, bad, and indifferent - because it's not just about the free speech of students," Robitz told the students in the video. "When you open it up to free speech that means anyone anywhere can come on here and do that and that might create some other challenges for this campus that we're not prepared to manage."
Meanwhile, Tuesday's incident is one among a stream of instances of public colleges and universities censoring the distribution of copies of the Constitution, according to The Daily Caller.
