Under the rules at Arkansas State, everyone has to be polite and civil to each other. Oh, and the school will decide what does and doesn’t qualify.

That’s pretty clear, right?

Samantha Harris of The FIRE reports.

Speech Code of the Month: Arkansas State University

FIRE announces its Speech Code of the Month for August 2014: Arkansas State University.

Arkansas State’s Standards of Student Conduct (PDF) include a set of “principles [that] are part of the collective expectation of the members of this community relative to personal conduct.” One of those principles is “civility,” which Arkansas State defines as follows:

Members of a learning community interact with others in a courteous and polite manner. Members of the community are expected to respect the values, opinions or feelings of others.

Lest there be any question as to whether these “principles” are aspirational or mandatory, the policy goes on to state:

The university reserves the right to discipline students or student organizations for inappropriate actions that occur on or off the campus to secure compliance with these higher obligations. Students failing to maintain these higher obligations may be asked to leave the academic community.

Think about this policy in light of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict going on right now and the intense emotions that conflict is producing in people whose sympathies lie on either side of the conflict. Under the plain language of this policy, Arkansas State could not only discipline but expel a student for engaging in a heated argument with another student about the conflict. If one student failed to respond to another’s arguments in a “courteous” or “polite” manner, or if he or she demonstrated a lack of “respect” for another student’s opinions, that could spell the end of his or her education at Arkansas State. That is not only blatantly unconstitutional; it also goes against everything that a university should stand for.

People are allowed to be passionate. They are allowed to disrespect others’ opinions, even to insult and shock people in the course of expressing their views. That may not always be the most effective way to argue—in most cases, I think civil, reasoned debate wins the day—but people’s right to express strong feelings cannot be shut down in the name of “civility” or “respect.”