Things like free speech and due process are old tired ideas anyway, right?

Samantha Harris of the FIRE blog reports.

UMW’s Punishment of Rugby Team Disregards Free Speech, Due Process

Another week, another public university president defying the First Amendment.

Declaring that his university (unconstitutionally) prohibits “derogatory statements of any form,” University of Mary Washington (UMW) President Richard Hurley announced last week that the UMW men’s rugby club has been dissolved, and all of its players ordered to attend sensitivity training, because of a few team members’ participation in a bawdy song recorded at a November 2014 party.

The song in question, the lyrics of which revolve around having sex with the body of a dead prostitute, has raised eyebrows. But in declaring this speech out of bounds and levying punishment, the university has completely failed to account for context—and when it comes to determining whether speech constitutes harassment or a true threat (and is thus unprotected), context is often critical.

If a group of men showed up at a brothel in the middle of the night chanting about sex with dead prostitutes, there might indeed be some merit to a claim that the speech was threatening. But here, we are talking about a song sung at an off-campus party by a group of people who share a tradition of bawdy music. When considered in this context, you can’t credibly present the chant as expression so menacing that it is devoid of First Amendment protection.

But that is exactly what a student group, and now the UMW administration, have done in this case.

According to Erin Gloria Ryan at Jezebel, student Paige McKinsey was given a recording of the chant by her friend, who attended the party. McKinsey, president of the student group Feminists United on Campus, encouraged her friend to report the incident to the UMW administration. Over the next several months, McKinsey’s student group and other concerned students and faculty urged the administration to take action, and on March 18, President Hurley announced that “[a]ll rugby club activities have been suspended indefinitely. Further, each member of the men’s rugby club is required to participate in education and training sessions regarding sexual assault and violence.”