Expression On Campus

881 Words4 Pages

Freedom of speech issues on public and private college campuses have caused great controversies between the students and the college authorities. In addition, the conflicts have attracted attention from the president of Harvard University, an education journalist, and an experienced law professor— Derek Bok, Jeffery Young, and Howard Wasserman. They critically analyze the dilemmas in their articles— “Protecting Freedom of Expression on Campus”, “Censor of Quality Control?”, and “Fan Profanity” based on their own experiences on whether or not public and private colleges have the entitlement to censor and limit the students’ speech on campus. By using assertions, evidence, oppositions, and solutions in their essays, they prove their stances …show more content…

However, the university is unable to regulate the students’ offensive symbols. In detail, the quote “…extremely difficult to decide… particular communication is offensive enough to warrant prohibition or to weigh the degree of offensiveness against the potential value of communication” demonstrates that to limit and categorize speech is challenging since people have diverse opinions on what type of speech is deemed as offensive or discourteous (Bok). The opposition of this conflict is that speech regulations can trigger backfires by certain rebellious and problematic offenders who believe in their actions. To solve the dilemma, Bok encourages the readers to overlook offensive material and educate the offenders in order to cause less publicity of obnoxious speech and help the wrongdoers understand their negative effects on the …show more content…

The main assertion of the article is that people who use profane language at public college games are protected under the First Amendment. To support this assertion, the quote “The… guidelines is to enable the majority of the fans to enjoy the game unburdened by…offensive signs…but such policy enacted and enforced at a public university…will not survive First Amendment scrutiny” illustrates that public universities cannot enforce speech regulations upon students because it violates the First Amendment(Wasserman 53). However, others may say that the captive audience doctrine can “…force speakers…to alter their manner of communicating to protect the sensibilities of these captive fans”; showing that instead of having the audiences leave and not enjoy the game, the offensive speakers can change their manner of communicating (Wasserman 53). As a result, the author develops a solution of notifying the readers that fan profanity is a right, but clean cheers can be encouraged while protecting the First Amendment and keeping games