Limiting free speech on campus to ‘free speech zones’ is bad enough but what if there are hardly any of those spaces on campus?

Kaitlyn Schallhorn of Campus Reform reports.

Public university sued for limiting speech to less than one percent of campus

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is suing the University of Georgia (UGA) on behalf of a student group over the university’s “speech zones”—or lack thereof.

According to ADF’s lawyers, UGA’s “free speech zones” compose less than one percent of the main campus. UGA’s policy, posted on the school’s website, quarantines free speech to two areas: the Tate Student Center Plaza and the Memorial Hall Plaza, both of which are open to students Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. Still, approval to organize, demonstrate and display other forms of expression must be approved first by the Associate Dean of Students 48 hours in advance.

“Public universities are supposed to be the marketplace of ideas, and so they should promote and celebrate free speech, not quarantine it to less than one percent of the campus,” Travis Barham, ADF’s litigation staff counsel who is representing the group, said in a press release.

ADF is suing on behalf of the school’s Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) chapter, which wants to distribute literature on campus without retribution from university officials. In March 2011, the student group constructed a clock representing the mounting national debt. According to the students, the university prohibited them from displaying the clock in an area of the school that wasn’t a designated free speech zone despite other groups organizing in different areas of the campus.

A spokesperson for UGA told Campus Reform that the university was “not aware that it’s an issue here” in regards to free speech on campus and said he was also unaware of any pending lawsuit. He told Campus Reform permits are generally offered “the same day or the next.”


 
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