Student Sues Citrus College District over “Shut-Up Culture”
“My vision of college was to express what I think.”
It looks like Citrus College student Vincenzo Sinapi-Riddle is not willing to participate in the “Campus Shut-Up Culture.”
Vincenzo Sinapi-Riddle is a passionate libertarian who was thrilled to attend Citrus College in Glendora for what he imagined would be a quintessential college experience of unbridled debate.
But after he arrived last year, he learned that the college required all petitioning, pamphleting and other expressive activities be confined to a small “free speech area” on the campus quad. And when he launched his first petition effort last fall, he said — against spying by the National Security Agency — an administrator told him he was outside the designated zone and warned that he could be ejected from campus.
“It was shocking to me that there could be so much hostility about me talking to another student peacefully about government spying,” said Sinapi-Riddle, 20. “My vision of college was to express what I think.”
On Tuesday, he filed a lawsuit against the Citrus Community College District, joining students in Iowa, Ohio and Illinois in what is thought to be the first coordinated legal attack on free speech restrictions in higher education.
The initiative is aimed at eliminating speech codes and other policies that restrict expression on public campuses. It is sponsored by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a Philadelphia-based group that promotes free speech and due process rights at colleges and universities.
In his lawsuit, Sinapi-Riddle is challenging Citrus’ free-speech area as well as an anti-harassment policy that he argued is overly broad and a multi-step process for approving student group events. The college was sued over its free speech zones in 2003 and eliminated them after a legal settlement a year later. But last year, college trustees “readopted in essence the unconstitutional policy it abandoned,” Sinapi-Riddle’s complaint said.
Student sues Citrus College District over free speech restrictions (Los Angeles Times)
Comments
There’s a concept in constitutional law that can be used to defeat claims of qualified immunity by defendants.
FIRE of course knows about it. I hope it’s used in these cases.
It’s called the Clearly Established procedure.
When certain constitutional or statutory rights are so clearly established that the reasonably aware person would know or should know of them, then any violation of those rights will defeat the claim of immunity. The concept came in during the 1980s I think.
This is a way of getting at these college administrators personally, getting into their own pocketbooks. When they realize that they have skin in the game, that they could be held personally liable for the deprivation of rights, then they will become more attentive.
If any of the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, free speech rights would certainly fall in the clearly established category.
“My vision of college was to express what I think.”
Silly ol’ me – I used to think college was about learning something.