Monday, September 10, 2007

Swingeing Speech Restrictions at Ohio State U

We read:

"The Office of University Housing at Ohio State, a public university, maintains a Diversity Statement that severely restricts what students in Ohio State's residence halls can and cannot say. Students are instructed: "Do not joke about differences related to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, ability, socioeconomic background, etc."

Of the many hundreds of policies FIRE has catalogued over the years, this is the first that flatly instructs students, "do not joke" about controversial topics. As anyone who has ever lived in a dormitory can likely attest, dorms are where some of the freest and most frank discussions among college students take place. And some of those discussions will almost certainly include-gasp!-jokes about controversial topics such as race, ethnicity, and yes, possibly even ability....

Not only is that an unfortunate choice, it is also one that, at a public university like Ohio State, violates students' constitutional right to free speech. There is no exception to the First Amendment for ethnic jokes or dumb blonde jokes.

Source

Obviously written by some wild-eyed Leftist.