Noah Jabusch
In recent weeks, the nation has fervently debated the right of football players to protest during games, as well as the right of college students to protest speakers with whom they disagree. Into this discussion stepped Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a recent speech, as reported by the New York Times.
Ironically, Sessions criticized students and athletes alike for exercising their First Amendment freedom “peaceably to assemble” and speak their minds, while simultaneously attempting to frame himself as a champion for the freedom of expression.
In addition to such comments, the Times revealed that Sessions’ Department of Justice has interjected itself into a small court case regarding campus free speech by submitting statements explaining the government’s interest in the case. The Obama administration employed a similar tactic to support civil rights.
Although it is admirable for the Department of Justice to express such full-throated support of the First Amendment, this support has been notably one-sided considering Sessions’ robust condemnations of recent protests. It is imperative that Sessions adjust his tone within Department of Justice actions to ensure that all free speech is protected, not merely those forms that Sessions prefers.
The issue of free speech specifically affects college students, especially those on public land, as our schools are required to allow for free speech on campus. Moreover, universities have historically facilitated the spread of new ideas and social movements, and vibrant expression is essential to this role in society.
In June, North Carolina passed HB 527, a law discussing the role of free expression in UNC-System schools. Most of the language sounds innocent or even beneficial, demonstrating strong support for student organizations and individuals’ opinions, stating that the institution must treat content neutrally, restricting speech only where the institution has a pressing interest.
Nonetheless, one clause in the law is potentially alarming. Clause Seven of HB 527 states that the institution must create sanctions against disruption, “including protests and demonstrations that infringe upon the rights of others to engage in and listen to expressive activity.”
This law, which is now in force for all UNC-System schools, codifies the bias against protest expressed by Sessions in his speech and which often pervades discourse around this topic. The vagueness of the word “infringe” means that administration officials have no clear guidelines as to how much protest is a disruptive amount. However, seeing as the law specifically calls out protests — and no other type of expression — as potentially disruptive, administrations will likely watch protests more closely than other forms.
In addition, individual administrations will not have substantial latitude to set their own policies, as the law establishes a committee to set specific policies. This committee is composed of members of the Board of Governors, who are elected by the General Assembly and thus are insulated from students’ actual concerns. This top-down approach means that students will have less say over the law’s implementation than if it were controlled by the school’s administration.
People often associate even peaceful protests with violence, even though this falsely attributes the violent tendencies toward the group as a whole. Such associations likely arise from the availability heuristic — the psychological phenomenon where we believe intense events to be more common simply because we remember them better than the vast majority of dull events. When people see news about a few violent individuals within a crowd of hundreds or thousands of peaceful demonstrators, they focus on the violence out of proportion to its actual prevalence.
Beyond psychological bias, society often misunderstands the key difference between a civil right and a civil liberty. The right to free speech is not, in fact, a civil right, but rather a civil liberty. A liberty protects one from government intervention, whereas a civil right protects against discrimination by private citizens. Therefore, the First Amendment, while giving speakers the right to present without government retaliation, does not protect them against protests by students.
As students, we have the constitutional liberty to protest peacefully without facing retribution by the administration, a governmental entity. For this reason, HB 527 is potentially threatening to our freedoms, and as such, we must remain vigilant in the face of potential intrusions.
Regardless of pressure by the public against student protest, we ought to continue expressing our perspective through legal means, in order to ensure our campus remains an environment for open discourse. We must also mind that administration not overstep its bounds in enforcing this law, by using Student Government to help shape policy and remaining informed on disputes involving student expression on campus.