*Freedom of Speech*

I'd like to meet:

More campus free speech cases

"Understandably, I am dismayed by the court's opinion, and find it troubling and grossly flawed; it demonstrates a considerably deficient comprehension on the part of the majority of the appellate judges of the allegations, university policy, deposed statements, material documents, and timeline of events evidenced by said items, which might be why the court reached such an erroneous decision. Doubtless, if the court's decision is permitted to stand, the results will be disastrous for adult students in any expressive venue who might clash with prurient or political administrative interests. Regardless of our pro se status, my coplaintiffs and I are resolved to appeal to the nation's highest court."
-Statement by Margaret Hosty, co-plaintiff, June 20, 2005

"Students should, regardless of their academic interests, consider an institution's commitment to free speech before deciding whether to attend."
-Statement by SPJ President Christine Tatum.

"The implications are frightening to college journalists and should be frightening to readers."
- University Wire, Ball State University

"People tend to think this is just a newspaper thing, but this is about free expression for everybody, not just journalists," said Jim Killam, president of the Illinois College Press Association. "This could extend to students on campus and to all kinds of things that could be considered school sponsored. It could have a really chilling effect on free speech on campuses if this thing goes through."
- Illinois College Press Association

Q: What has been the personal cost to you?
Margaret Hosty: It's been very taxing, emotionally, physically and mentally. Financially it has seriously impeded our getting on with our lives. They are still retaliating against us, for which we are going to have to probably bring other litigation against them. We both should have graduated about a year ago. Have you ever been on a campus and had armed guards posted at doors to keep you out of places? They were not being subtle about their animosity towards us. The thing that people don't seem to realize is, because GSU has done such a wonderful job keeping it out of the press, we're not the only students who have made charges of violations of fourteenth and First amendment violations against this university. There are 32 other people who have done as much. They had the same judge we did and they are going to be before the appellate court. And if there were a student newspaper, or a student newspaper that was not in the back pocket of the administration, perhaps we would have been able to tell them.

Read the entire interview by clicking here

What Can You Do?
Are you interested in helping? Do you belong to an organization or group interested in showing support for the student editors? Email us at [email protected] for details on how you can contribute!
This case not over. You can continue to make a difference. Here's how:
1.) Stay informed about the case(s) and make sure your campus community is as well. The First Amendment rights of all public college and university students could be affected by this ruling. How many people on your campus have even heard about the case? Make sure you know what's at stake and your audience does as well.
2.) Ask your top school administrators to sign off on a statement supporting student press freedom and give them heat if they aren't willing to do so. What this statement should say can be as simple as this:

[Name of school] recognizes and affirms the editorial independence and press freedom of all student-edited campus media. Student editors have the authority to make all content decisions and consequently they bear the responsibility for the decisions that they make.
3.) Keep the pressure on your school officials to express their support for student free expression in writing, and keep your readers informed about the progress of your effort. Start a campus petition or a blue-ribbon campaign (in support of free expression) and create a regular feature for your publication about the status of free expression protections on your campus.
S.P.L.C.

This space is maintained by those dedicated to saving freedom of speech on college campuses!
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College Freedom - Blogspot

Fanning the Flames - The Freedom Museum Blog

Music:

"Paranoia strikes deep.
Into your life it will creep.
It starts when youre always afraid.
You step out of line, the man come and take you away."
For what its worth,Buffalo Springfield

"...We are at war until you're free.
You'll never silence tha voice of the voiceless.
And Orwell's hell a terror era coming through;
But this little brother's watching you too."
Voice Of The Voiceless, Rage Against The Machine

"Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war;
And when you ask them, 'How much should we give?'
They only answer "More! More! More!"
Fortunate Son, CCR

"I will see my own blood flow,
Before you take my land...or my liberty"
Memory Of The Dead, Rage Against The Machine

Where you live should not decide
Whether you live or whether you die.
Crumbs from Your Table, U2

"Under a blood red sky,
A crowd has gathered in black and white.
Arms entwined, the chosen few.
The newspapers says, says
Say it's true it's true...
And we can break through.
Though torn in two,
We can be one"
New Year's Day, U2

"We can do the innuendo, we can dance and sing.
When it's said and done, we haven't told you a thing.
We all know that crap is king, give us dirty laundry."
Dirty Laundry, Don Henley

Television:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door ."

Forums

Click to join the
College Press Freedom Forum

Books:

"Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

WHAT'S NEXT?

"The less you know the more you believe."
Last Night on Earth, U2
"...The FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, decided all by itself that radio and television were the only two parts of American life not protected by the free speech provisions of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
I'd like to repeat that because it sounds vaguely important:
The FCC, an appointed body, not elected, answerable only to the President, decided on its own that radio and television were the only two parts of American life not protected by the free speech provisions of the First Amendment to the Constitution!
Why did they decide that? Because they got a letter from a reverend in Mississippi! A reverend Donald Wildman in Mississippi heard something on the radio that he didn't like...
Well reverend, did anyone ever tell you that there are two knobs on the radio? Two knobs on the radio! Of course, I'm sure the reverend isn't too comfortable with anything that has two knobs on it...
Well hey, reverend, there are two knobs on the radio! One of the turns the radio off, the other changes the station! Imagine that, reverend! You can actually change the station! It's called freedom of choice, and it's one of the principles this country was founded on! Look it up in the library, reverend, if you have any of them left when you've finished burning all the books!"
..-George Carlin, What Am I Doing In New Jersey?

Heroes:

In a prepared statement, New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said:
"There are times when the greater good of our democracy demands an act of conscience. Judy has chosen such an act in honoring her promise of confidentiality to her sources. She believes, as do we, that the free flow of information is critical to an informed citizenry."
"For in a Republic, who is "the country?" Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them."
-Mark Twain

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
-Thomas Jefferson

"If we don't believe in freedom of speech for those you despise, we don't believe in it at all."
-Noam Chomsky

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
-Aldous Huxley

"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."
-Benjamin Franklin

"In isolated societies creeds can be preserved. It is where people of different traditions, outlook and creeds mingle freely and exchange ideas that religious beliefs begin to be eroded. No one changes his beliefs without some instigation, some novel experience, some modification of the customary course of things, and in a closed society people believe what all their fellows obviously believe. Only when they are brought into contact with persons whom they respect holding different views do they begin to look at their inherited beliefs critically."
-G.A. Wells

"The more restrictions and prohibitions in the world, the poorer people get."
-Lao Tzu

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense."
-Buddha

"The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself."
-Robert G. Ingersoll

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
-Thomas Sowell

"People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"...when men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon."
-Thomas Paine

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin

"Be a Citizen, Not a Subject. Democracy is not a Spectator Sport!"
-Author Unknown

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
-H. L. Mencken

"The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first objective should be to keep the right; and were it to me to decide whether we should have a government without a newspaper or a newspaper without a government i should hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
-Thomas Jefferson

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has."
-Margaret Mead

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
-Plato

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-Thomas Jefferson

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."
-Ronald Reagan

"Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired. "
-David George

"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything--you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."
-Robert A. Heinlein

"The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas."
-Carl Sagan

"The function on science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it."
-Frank Herbert
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."
-Jimi Hendrix
"Censoring what you say is one of the ways in which people who are not nice can take away your personal freedom."
-Frank Zappa
"Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality"
-Frank Zappa