'Free Speech Is Flunking Out On College Campuses'

Throughout history there have been authors that use their power over words to craft statements that influence others in subjects of life. Just as history repeats itself, so does the ideas that occur in there writings. There are authors that use different styles of writing to portray the same exact idea. This similarity isn’t necessarily a bad thing; this just shows the importance of the topic that is being written about. “Night Waitress” written by Lynda Hull, “Free Speech is Flunking Out on College Campuses” written by Catherine Rampell, and “The Story of an Hour” written by Kate Chopin are all connected by a similar concept. This concept is that there are boundaries that entraps our freedom to a point that we are not in control of our lives.

One can assume that the job the woman has is due to the fact that she chose the first job she could find. Hull wrote this poem in 1986, around the time that Communism and the Cold War would be a scare for most americans. This time period and the fact that the woman is of slavic descent work together to restrict her social status from progressing very far. Not only is society itself a boundary, but the woman’s job is too. The woman’s job is one that starts late night and goes until morning. She servers at a diner where the men “do not see [her].” the woman expresses her loneliness through her standard being lowered to a point that she “would not stop him if he touched [her]” (104). This job prohibits the woman from joining in a relationship with a man. This feeling of entrapment is clearly stated when the woman describes the calendar on her wall as a “white squares waiting / to be filled like … jail cells” (104). The woman’s life means nothing to herself as she lives out this enslaved

This is used to “protect” the students from hate speech and other things like it. The very concept of speech would be tested as student, Bryan Stascavage, wrote an Op-Ed in his college’s newspaper. The Op-Ed criticized the Black Lives Matter Movement’s use of anti-cop tactics. This well worded Op-Ed that didn’t aim to call anyone out or offend anyone started a wave of protest on the campus. Stascavage had actually hoped that from his Op-Ed he would have a “Constructive dialogue that college is supposed to nurture. Instead, he found sparring partners who wanted him silenced” (783). This silencing of dissenting opinions would prove to be a sense of entrapment to people everywhere. This teaches that “dissent will be punished” and that they should “nod along” to whatever the liberal leaders have to say (783). This traps the thought of every person to one mindset, no variance to any degree. The creations of “safe spaces” created a boundary of speech and the constructiveness of the dialogue that it