This is an update to a story we reported earlier this week.

Mary Lou Byrd of the Washington Free Beacon reports.

College Cracking Down on Jokes

Update, 4:30 p.m.: Hours after the publication of this story, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education issued a statement this afternoon announcing that the charges against the female student have been dropped.

“We’re pleased that the student is no longer weighed down by these chilling disciplinary charges and can focus on her education,” said Peter Bonilla, Director of FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program. “UO’s quick action here illustrates something we’ve long recognized at FIRE: Universities are seldom able to defend in public what they try to do in private.”

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Students at the University of Oregon began their fall semester on Monday amid controversy over conduct charges filed against a female student for making a joke.

The university is under fire for filing five charges against the student after she yelled “I hit it first” to a couple passing under her window during the summer semester. The student, who requested anonymity, said she did not know the couple and called out the phrase in jest, according to her account to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

FIRE is now calling on the university to drop the charges and revise what it calls unconstitutional speech codes.

“It is remarkable that the university apparently didn’t give a first thought to this student’s First Amendment rights before throwing the book at her and allowing these unconstitutional charges to hang over her head for the entire summer,” said Peter Bonilla, Director of FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program, in a prepared statement yesterday.