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Abusive Language (4)

Over the course of many years there were racist incidents at the University of Missouri, including white students putting cotton balls on the lawn in front of the University’s Black Culture Center (they were arrested and prosecuted with a hate crime), other students were put on probation for racially charged graffiti in dorms. There were Facebook posts going around describing the school’s bigoted and toxic environment. In 2015, students started protesting about the racism that was plaguing the campus and the administration’s inaction. These protests—specifically the football team’s boycott—eventually led to the resignation of the President. In an attempt to address these issues and create a safer environment, the university’s police sent an email asking students to report hateful and/or hurtful speech. The email noted that this kind of speech was not a crime but the Office of Student Conduct could discipline students (Graham).

The University of Missouri is not the first and certainly won’t be the last, college/institution to have to deal with hurtful speech. The Supreme Court has not made it easy. All of the cases the Supreme Court has heard regarding campus speech code have determined that the codes are unconstitutional (Tedford & Herbeck 208). They find that the codes are too broad, vague and thus violate the First Amendment (Tedford & Herbeck 206). This puts schools (and other institutions) in a difficult place. They want to try and make the environment as open, inclusive, and as safe as possible for all students, but what they can actually do to make sure the campus is safe and free of abusive language is unclear. Many schools still have these speech codes that are more restrictive than the constitution, but as many have been ruled unconstitutional by the courts it is unlikely that many of these codes (if brought to court) would win, rendering them somewhat toothless. This causes me to wonder: what can colleges do to maintain safe spaces free of abusive language, such that it is part of their official policy?


Sources:
Graham, David A. “When Campus Hate-Speech Rules Go Further Than the Law.” The Atlantic, 10 Nov. 2015.

Tedford, Thomas L., and Dale A. Herbeck. Freedom of speech in the United States. 8th ed., State      College, PA, Strata Publishing, Inc., 2017.


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