This is today's News-Gazette editorial.
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/opinions/editorials/2007/12/07/campus_free_speech_at_issue
THE NEWS-GAZETTE
Campus free speech at issue
Friday December 7, 2007
Cheers for the University of Illinois undergraduate students who took a stand for free speech at an Urbana campus Senate meeting earlier this week.
It's clear that some older people on campus could learn a thing or two from the youngsters. The Senate's equal opportunity committee attempted to pass a resolution that would have dissociated the university administration from future homecoming displays.
More significantly, it also would have put the Senate on record as saying that any effort to display Chief Illiniwek imagery at a campus event jeopardizes the authority of the administration to condemn free speech expressions that also "are legitimately read as negative stereotyping of members of underrepresented, historically disadvantaged or marginalized groups" on campus.
In other words, some sort of police officer should be able to single out examples of speech and expression that certain people don't agree with, and those "offenders" should be censured.
But two students correctly called the resolution what it is – an effort to squelch free speech, on a university campus of all places.
Paul Schmitt, president of the student group Students for Chief Illiniwek, said the resolution "adds nothing to the academic mission of the university." He added that a true marketplace of ideas – which a campus should strive to be – has different customers. Another student, Frank Calabrese, hit the nail squarely on the head: "The university should embrace free speech, not run away from it like a bunch of cowards."
Some say with age comes wisdom. But we'd suggest that's not the case all the time. Sometimes the younger people are wiser.
