Months after Professor David Guth’s tweets wishing death for the children of NRA members led to his suspension,  the University of Kansas Board of Regents  tasked a group of faculty and staff to develop a new policy defining punishments for “improper use of social media”.

The Kansas workgroup tasked to create a new social media policy doubles down on academic freedom in its finalized proposal. But will the regents who wanted to regulate social media use go along?

Faculty members and staffers at public institutions in Kansas have doubled down on a policy that protects their right to express their opinions on social media. The proposal now heads to the Kansas Board of Regents, where it faces uncertain prospects.

The finalized policy follows a four-month effort by a workgroup of faculty and staff representatives from the state’s six public four-year institutions. The board ordered the formation of the workgroup after faculty outrage flared in response to a set of controversial social media guidelines proposed last December. Under those rules, an employee could be fired for “improper use of social media,” which faculty members and free speech advocates said could have posed a threat to academic freedom.

When the board receives the policy proposal next week, it will have been nearly seven months since the controversy first began with an incendiary tweet about the Sept. 16 Navy Yard massacre in Washington, D.C.

A draft of the policy, published last month, quoted the American Association of University Professors’ 1940 Statement of Principles as it established faculty and staff members’ right to “speak on matters of public concern as private citizens, if they choose to do so.” Apart from a handful of wording changes, an added reference to academic freedom and a reminder that social media use shouldn’t violate “existing university or Board of Regents policies,” the final proposal is virtually identical to the draft.

Faculty members who want to weigh in on politics or criticize their campus leaders would in other words be free to speak out.

“The revised policy is one that is written to reassure people, without changing anything that already exists,” the report reads. “It does not create new rights nor does it enlarge existing rights, the revised policy merely affirms rights.”

Despite the seemingly minor changes, Charles R. Epp, the University of Kansas professor of public affairs and administration who co-chaired the workgroup, said the interest in how, or if, to regulate social media continues to be a topic of fierce debate across the state’s campuses.

“The level of concern among faculty and staff at Kansas universities about this question is pretty high,” Epp said. “I think it’s clear from the comments that there’s an awful lot of support for the proposed revisions that we are recommending. There’s a degree of cautious optimism that we’ll be seriously heard.”