These Missouri and Kansas colleges do a poor job supporting free speech, group says
One area Missouri college and another in Kansas do a poor job supporting freedom of speech rights on their campuses, according to a First Amendment watchdog group.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, gave the University of Central Missouri and Wichita State University the group’s lowest rating in its annual tally of free speech violators.
UCM officials say they plan to review their contested policies soon. Wichita officials were not immediately available for comment on Tuesday.
FIRE surveyed 450 public and private schools, including 11 in Missouri and five in Kansas. UCM and WSU were the only two in those states to receive a “red light” rating, indicating that a university “has at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.”
The group’s color-based ratings give a green light for schools it ranks the best, yellow for the middle and red for the worst. Most Missouri and Kansas schools, including University of Missouri System’s four campuses, Missouri State and the University of Kansas, landed in the middle. Only Kansas State University earned a green light rating.
FIRE’s Spotlight Database rates an institution’s written policies governing student speech in such areas as sexual harassment, bias and hate speech, bullying, protest and demonstration, posting fliers and internet usage.
Considering FIRE’s strict criteria, UCM and Wichita ran into trouble with their policies on sexual misconduct, which the group claims are too broad and do not follow the standards defining harassment set by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999.
The UCM policy says, “Sexual harassment is unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. Sexual harassment can include unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature,”
The Supreme Court says the unwelcome conduct has to be “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive” by a reasonable person who is similar to the victim, said Laura Beltz, an attorney for FIRE and one of the writers of the database.
She said the way the two university policies are written, students could assume that telling one sexually explicit joke in a classroom could put them in violation of the school policy on harassment, and “that violates a person’s right to free speech,” Beltz said.
FIRE suggests the schools reword their policies to closely follow the Supreme Court’s language.
FIRE also questioned a Wichita policy that requires students to give university administration a 72-hour notice before protesting or handing out leaflets on campus.
FIRE and other groups protecting the right to free speech have succeeded in getting colleges and universities to correct what they deem as the worst violations, such as uninviting controversial speakers, limiting student protest or requiring professors to warn students before discussing a subject some might find offensive.
“Creating free speech and safe space zones on campuses is so 2017,” said Alex Dwyer, a University of Kansas graduate who started a right-leaning student group on the Lawrence campus a few years ago. He said that after students objected, colleges stopped limiting where on campus students can express different ideologies.
But while most schools have reworked policies to support free speech, Beltz said, some still have policies that are vague or restrictive.
“A lot of time these colleges don’t even know they have a problem policy or that the wording in the policy infringes on free speech,” Beltz said.
This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
