What is considered protected, as opposed to sacred, is the right of the American people to express their opinions without prior restraint by any government agent. The point is not how odious you find it in one case, or how delightful you find it in another. The point is that your opinion of the content of my expression of opinion does not constrain my right to make that opinion known.
Any organization supported in any part by funding from the government must abide by the law, and the law has already been made clear. Burning a flag is only illegal if fire itself is illegal.
If they can successfully argue that they were not aware of the meaning of the Arabic and that their provacation against Muslim students was unintentional, they might not be in violation of the code of conduct.
The fact that the incident specifically involved flags is irrelevant, though.
Thanks. So you can burn a flag anywhere you can burn, say, a paper cup. If you can’t burn a paper cup due to open flame laws or fire ordinances or the landlord’s rules, you can’t burn a flag.
That’s what I figured.
So the answer to my second query ([is the college] bound to protect Constitutional rights at all times, or this Constitutional right at all…) is no, just as I suspected.
Yeah, that was pretty obvious, wasn’t it? :rolleyes:
Thanks for all your help. Seems pretty cut and dried to me: they’re not acting unconstitutionally, but because the school’s rules may have been violated, they have every right to enforce those.
I’d like to know why, in the opinion of some people, the sensibilities of the vast majority of Americans are free to be offended but the sensibilities of a very small minority must be protected?
It seems like a complete disconnect to me. First Amendment protections exist so that we may all be offended from time to time.
Nope. Not always, anyway. I’ve heard people argue that since the porper way to dispose of a US flag that’s been dishonored, soiled, or touched the ground is to burn it, flag burning (to them) symbolically says “<the government> has soiled our flag, this is how we dispose of it”. A subtle messgae, perhaps, but clearly not necessarily hostile to the flag and that for which it stands.
I’m not sure that the OP’s analogy to burning the US flag is exactly the appropriate one here, but I do think this highlights the absurdity of speech codes at universities. This clearly violates the 1st amendment, and in my opinion, universities have no right to create speech codes that contradict the spirit of the US Constitution in the first place. Especially a public university!
Well, there’s still a problem with flags containing religious symbols. For example, the UK flag contain no less that three Christian symbols. If a student group burned the UK flag to protest against some UK policy or action, and that offended some Christians, should the student group be sanctioned becauise of that?
They certainly can. Political behavior can be restricted, but it has to be done in a content neutral manner. They are on very thin ice constitutionally though. As I said, I’m out on the extreme wing of this - I have a knee jerk belief that hate speech codes are unconstitutional in public schools. Courts haven’t gone that far, but there is no real solid constitutional basis for them.
That does seem to be their argument, or at least part of it. From the article:
Furthermore, Mr. Moto, I think your OP is misleading in a certain respect. You say that administrators are “set to strip a student group of funding and recognition because they burned and stomped two flags at a rally.” What the article actually says is that:
So, IF they violated policies, THEN they wil be suspended.
Of course the College Republicans didn’t know that this flag (or possibly this flag) contained the word for God. These guys don’t read Arabic. What do you think they are, terrorist-lovers? (I know, cheap shot, I’m evil).
The student complaints against the group are totally bogus. There’s no way in hell that they’re accurate, and if the student union or whoever votes in their favor, the student union is full of idiots.
Looking around this group’s website, they’re also a bunch of idiots–but in this case, they’re idiots in the legal right.
The students union may also be in the legal right, and AFAICT, the school governance is also in the legal right, inasmuch as they’ve passed the case to the student groups for resolution. Indeed, they may well be hoping that the students union (or whoever) will find in favor of the College Republicans on free-speech ground, thereby learning the fundamental, terrible lesson behind freedom of speech: freedom of speech protects total assholes, too.
Private universities certainly have that right, as do any sort of private business or residence. Public universities are a murkier situation. The problem is, where does free speech end, and equal access begin? Let’s say that the KKK opens a frat house on campus, and it’s members make a habit of taunting black students with racial epithets, to the point that black students do not feel safe attending the campus and start withdrawing from the university. One could argue that, under the 14th ammendment, the university has a duty to suppress the hate speech on campus so that everyone has an equal opportunity to make use of the government services being offered. Additionally, one could also argue that the university has a right to act to retain it’s student body and attract additional students, both of which are being harmed if the school gets a reputation as a haven for white supremacists.
In this specific case, though, I’d be hard pressed to say that the group in question is creating a hostile enviroment for Muslim or Middle Eastern descended students. I’m tentatively on the side of the college Republicans, based on the information presented in this thread.
Those boys are idiots. It’s pretty difficult to make a public declaration in opposition to terrorism and lose the moral high ground, but they managed it.
But the Constitution gives people the right to be idiots in public and it’s clear that what these guys were doing was expressing a political message in a legal manner.
The code of conduct issue is murkier. Offhand, I’d say that anybody who voluntarily agrees to abide by a code of conduct is subject to the code’s disciplinary action if they violate it. But the issues have been raised of whether they did knowingly violate the code and whether the terms of the code itself were legally permissible. I’ll admit I’m not really motivated to chase down the details of this issue.
My personal opinion is to lean as far as possible in defense of freedom of speech and if an issue is uncertain to say it’s legally protected.
How so? Do you think that it would have mattered if they had stomped on posters instead of flags? It was the stomping of the Arabic name for God that was the issue, not the medium it was printed on.
Well, I think where there is a lack of symmetry in this is that if you are in a small minority group, then actions can be perceived as potentially more threatening to you than when you are comfortably in the majority. An example of an action that goes beyond simple expression to being threatening would be the burning of a cross by the Ku Klux Klan, for example…especially in the days when they had the power to actually lynch people.
That said, I am not claiming that this applies in this case. It does not seem to me that burning these flags…or representations of these flags…rises to that level. If, it was accompanied by people yelling “Death to Palestinians” or “Death to Muslims” or something like that, then it would be a very different story.
On preview, let me just add that I also agree with everything that Little Nemo wrote and think that (s)he framed the whole issue exceptionally well.
You are right…I misspoke there. Private universities, like any private organization, can have any rules they want. I personally think it is a violation of the spirit of a university, but certainly they can have a speech code if they want.
You could make that case. I don’t think anything could persuade me, however, that a government agency has any business infringing on 1st amendment rights.
Does a state funded university have a right to make its students sign a code of conduct agreeing that they will not harrass other students on the basis of race/religion/gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation?
If I work for the DMV is it unconstitutional to prohibit me from wearing a Klan robe to work? How about a shirt that says “fuck” on it?
These students may have a case that they did not intend to harrass or offend Muslim students, but the principle that a school can require students to respect each other on campus does not sound unreasonable to me, and it’s not like these guys are even being punished. They just might not funding for their group anymore. Is the government out of line in requiring a code of conduct as a condition for funding student groups?
But is a political demonstration protesting about the activities of a Muslim organisation harrassment of Muslim students? Just being offended by the demonstration (no matter how deeply you are offended) is not the same as being harrassed.
I disagree wholeheartedly. I don’t think it matters whether or not they knew if it had Allah’s name on it or not. Is it prohibited to burn US currency because it has In God We Trust on it? Is burning pictures of KKK rally with a burning cross on it prohibited? The students have no special obligation to treat Islam with kid gloves. If anything, Muslims should be upset that terrorist groups are putting Allah’s name on their flags.
Campus anti-hate speech rules are a travesty and have the ultimate effect of alienating members of the majority religion, race, ethnicity, etc.
