In the last two years alone, local journalists have revealed that the University of Southern California kept on staff an allegedly meth-smoking medical school dean, his allegedly sexually abusive replacement, a gynecologist who allegedly spent three decades molesting hundreds of students, the Title IX staff that allegedly protected him, and the Vice President of Student Affairs who allegedly issued a hush-money payout to the now-disgraced doctor and failed to report him to the police.
Students are understandably unhappy. In that context, interim President Wanda Austin is trying to purge the beloved Dean James Ellis — the man solely responsible for bringing the Marshall School of Business to gender parity, the first MBA program in the nation to do so — in the name of diversity, no less. Alumni are livid as well. The termination of Ellis may cost the university millions in donations.
So, what do fascists do when the masses grow angry with their incompetence? Well, if you’re a university bureaucrat drunk off of taxpayer cash and the diversity dogma, you simply ban protests. In effect, that’s what USC has done.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has found that USC just updated a policy to force students to get university approval for any campus demonstration at least two weeks in advance. USC’s “Free Expression and Dissent” policy (oh, the irony!) used to merely “encourage” and “recommend” that students clear protests and demonstrations with the administration. Now, this is mandatory.
The absurd two-week-wait time and the obliteration of reasonable “time, place, and manner restrictions” allowed by First Amendment standards have led FIRE to update USC’s speech code rating to “Red Light,” the worst classification FIRE issues to schools in their 450 institution-strong database.
Sources on campus tell me that they haven’t heard about the updates to the policy, and the university-funded paper, the Daily Trojan, has not covered it. I’d say that students should take to Tommy Trojan to raise awareness, but I doubt the school would give them permission. After all, it’s the administration’s call now.
