A national group that defends free speech and the First Amendment is blasting UMass Dartmouth for its “unconstitutional free speech zone” — and urging the public university to change its policy that restricts student protests to a grassy area on campus.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education shreds UMass Dartmouth’s policy in the group’s “Speech Code of the Month” for December. FIRE each month highlights a campus policy.
“These are not reasonable restrictions at UMass Dartmouth,” Laura Beltz of FIRE told the Herald Thursday. “And even if the policy isn’t actually being enforced, it still can have a chilling effect on students who could be discouraged from going out and expressing themselves.”
The university could face lawsuits if it doesn’t “eliminate its unconstitutional free speech zone policy,” Beltz added.
Many colleges across the country are ditching their free speech zones, Beltz said, but UMass Dartmouth has kept its policy that prohibits free speech rights anywhere on campus, she added.
The free speech zone is 8,835 square feet, and is “in the direct center of the campus quad, allowing clear sightlines to those in the Campus Center, College of Visual and Performing Arts Building, and Administration Building,” according to a university spokesman.
In addition to protests getting restricted to that area, anyone seeking to use the zone must tell university police “at least 48 hours in advance regarding the date, time, number of people involved, and the contact person(s) for the event,” reads the university’s policy.
“That means if something happens in the news, students have to sit around for two days before they can get out and express themselves,” Beltz said. “This is unacceptable at a public university like UMass Dartmouth.”
The UMass Dartmouth spokesman said the university will soon examine the policy as part of the “regular policy review process.”
“The intent of the policy is to provide protesters with a safe, high visibility location that does not unlawfully impede the education of students or the business of the university while creating open communication between protesters and the institution should another location be preferred,” he said in the statement.
“Since the policy has been in effect, we are not aware of a single protest that has been halted due to location, including several that have taken place outside the public forum space,” the spokesman added.
Beltz said FIRE would be happy to work with UMass Dartmouth to develop a policy that “both meets their concerns about visibility, safety, and disruptions to the campus, while also meeting First Amendment standards.”
“Students should be able to use publicly available, outdoor areas of the campus for spontaneous expressive activities, unless such activities cause a substantial and material disruption to the campus,” she added in an email. “More narrow restrictions on this general rule, like requiring advance notice from planned activities involving over 50 students, or activities using amplified sound, would be reasonable, but the current approach is heavy-handed.”
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December 13, 2019 at 08:04AM
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UMass Dartmouth campus ripped for ‘free speech zone’ - Boston Herald
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