The editorial staff of Georgetown University’s The Hoya offers some thoughts about the school’s decision-making policies on a wide range of subjects as it closes out the 2013-2014 academic year.

Free Speech

The extent of free speech on campus has long been a point of tension between students and administrators. Although the current 24-year-old free speech policy does not clearly restrict free speech to Red Square, the Georgetown University Police Department still enforces the policy as if it does.

When H*yas for Choice tabled in Healy Circle, they were escorted away by GUPD. When Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor were separately invited to speak in Gaston Hall, university administrators screened student questions. When then-Georgetown University Student Association executives Nate Tisa (SFS ’14) and Adam Ramadan (SFS ’14) used their authority as student body leaders to send a campus-wide email, the Division of Student Affairs edited that email’s content.

…While administrators have reason both to keep and to liberalize the university’s free speech policy, staying on the fence about free speech is no longer a viable option. Olson promised earlier this year to clarify the free speech policy before the last day of classes, and with two days of classes to go, students have yet to hear from him. As students have demonstrated at January’s forum and in widespread demand for speech reform, the Hilltop deserves to have access to a clarified policy that allows student groups and students to function and freely speak without the possibility of unknown consequences.

Before conservative readers get too excited, the take on “gender identity” is standard progressive fare.

Gender Identity

This year, gender identity became a more prominent topic on campus. Efforts such as GU Pride’s addition of a trans* representative and increases in scale and promotion of events like the drag ball, GenderFunk, have encouraged the development of a broader movement to embrace students of all gender identities on campus.

Georgetown’s response to these developments, however, has been significantly less worthy of praise. When Olson said to the Georgetown Voice in September, “There is an emerging view that gender identity is sort of something you play with,” administrators’ reticence to changing the university’s perspectives on these issues was made perfectly clear. Georgetown has failed to capitalize on an opportunity to make campus a safer, more welcoming environment for transgender students and other traditionally excluded groups who often encounter challenges in living comfortably and openly on campus.

The full article also has commentary on campus sex assault policies and protests.