The Virginia Commonwealth University’s free speech policy recently received a Green Light Rating, indicating its policy abides by the First Amendment. The college had originally been given a yellow speech rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s free speech rating system. A yellow speech rating implies that a university has, “at least one ambiguous policy that too easily encourages administrative abuse and arbitrary application.”
The university originally came under fire for its policies toward planning demonstrations, policies which some say provide an avenue for censorship.
It recommended that for all demonstrations on campus, “A representative from the registered student organization, ad hoc student group, or non-student group should contact the assigned university official to discuss a date, time, and location for the demonstration.”
After this, the school assigned staff to oversee a demonstration. Many campus leaders were concerned due to the school’s threats to use campus police to end protests. In the policy it stated, “If the demonstration causes inconvenience, the demonstration leader will be informed by the staff liaison that the VCU Police will be called to end the demonstration if the behavior causing the inconvenience does not cease”
Due to the school’s recent move to crack down on off-campus demonstrators, activists had been even more troubled. Sergio Trujillo, a student at the university and President of VCU’s Young Americans for Liberty chapter had no uncertainty regarding the policy.
“My school’s restrictive code is a violation of the First Amendment,” Trujillo told Red Alert Politics.
Virginia Commonwealth University used to categorize all protests into four categories: Orderly, Inconvenience, Disruption, and Destruction. A school has every right to call the cops when major disruption and destruction of property occurs. However, the policy itself described an inconvenient protest as one in which, “There is some inconvenience caused to normal university operations and classes as a result of the presence of the demonstration on the campus; however, operations and classes are able to continue.”
According to FIRE’s Senior Program Officer Laura Beltz the policy, which she called an unreasonable requirement, “may have discouraged students from conducting spontaneous demonstrations at all”.
However, after working with FIRE, the school changed the policy. VCU maintains this policy change was simply routine, providing the following statement, “VCU reviews its policies on a regular basis. Given recent physical changes to the core of the Monroe Park Campus, as well as the expanding nature of activity on campus, an updated policy that reflected those changes, as well as other considerations, was in order.”
FIRE, along with other free speech activists are pleased with the policy change.
According to FIRE, “This new policy better protects students’ free speech rights, and earns a “green light” rating from FIRE. Earlier this summer, VCU maintained six yellow light rated speech codes. With this and other revisions, VCU is now down to just one speech code remaining. FIRE is thrilled by this progress toward an overall green light rating.”
This change signals a key victory for free speech activists on campus.
Emmanuel Sessegnon is studying Political Science and Business Administration at George Washington University. He is also a Media Ambassador for Young Americans for Liberty.
