Aided by FIRE, a Citrus College student is suing the school for violating his First Amendment rights. Citrus College restricts free speech to certain designated "zones" (unconstitutional) and also told this student that he could only conduct a pro-America rally outside the zone if he was a member of a recognized student group (also unconstitutional). The Citrus College president defends the rules, saying that they exist ''to protect not only the people who want to speak or demonstrate, but also our students who are intimidated by it.''

Read about the case at FIRE's website, or on the front page of USA Today.

UPDATE: Citrus College faculty and administrators are defending the school's free speech zone because other schools have them. The people making decisions at this school don't seem to have very powerful reasoning abilities: even little kids know that just because everyone else is doing something doesn't mean it's right to do that thing. Nor do the scions of Citrus College seem to read the papers or to be aware of the law: if they did, they would know that it's unconstitutional for a state school to restrict speech to designated zones. They would also know that this is one of FIRE's pet issues. Finally, and fatally, the people at Citrus College don't seem to learn from their mistakes. This is Citrus College's second major clash with FIRE this year. The student who is currently the plaintiff in the lawsuit is the same student who brought Rosalyn Kahn's partisan extra-credit assignments to FIRE's attention. In both instances, he first appealed to the school administration for justice. In both instances, his legitimate complaints were ignored.

Meanwhile, as Citrus College faces a possible 20% budget cut next year, salaries for administrators continue to rise. The amount the school spends on managers' salaries has increased 49% since 1999.

It's worth pointing out that Citrus College is a two-year community college (I just double-checked this on its website). I don't live too far away, and I've been acquainted with a few of its faculty as part of other activities. They aren't, to put it mildly, impressive, whatever their particular political viewpoints. In fact, when you consider the number of four-year institutions and full universities in Southern California, you can assume that they have absorbed most of the faculty and administrators who have any sense. Thus Citrus's standing as a "repeater" in the field of garnering really stupid and unnecessary publicity.

I would assume that the president and assorted deans should have participated in the type of professional activities that would have, by now, alterted them to the problems inherent in "free speech" zones, and indeed, to intelligent ways to manage the crises being presented to them by FIRE. Nope. Irrespective of the political issues, these guys deserve to be working at the local Burger King, managing the night shift, on a short leash.

As I've been saying, one problem in the educational system is that there are too many colleges out there, creating a student shortage. Seems to me like we can put Citrus College on a list of closure candidates.

Haven't the courts already effectively decided that schools can infringe on the rights of students so long as they have some sort of excuse?

These students "who are intimidated by it (free speech)"...I wonder what they are going to do after they graduate. There are very few environments where people are protected from opinions they don't like.

Most probably, they will make their way into schools or universities, and help perpetrate the same kind of thinking in the future.

For amy, I believe the legal problem colleges face is that, if they receive federal funding, their actions are restricted by the US Constitution, which prevents restrictions on the freedom of speech. No "excuse" would apply.

What puzzles me is the USA Today account, which says, "No particular incident prompted the year-old policy". The administration simply got together one day and decided to borrow trouble, possibly because they didn't have enough else to do (see my post above).

Then, confronted with what appears to have been FIRE's normal modus operandi, contacting the administrators privately and outlining the issues to them, they appear to have done nothing -- in the face of a web site (which somebody should have checked) showing what happens to a college if they let the problem get out of hand. USA Today could have been predicted weeks or months ago.

And THIS is after a first brush with having FIRE get involved in a problem. These guys are unbelievably stupid, and I suspect their careers are in early-truncation mode as we speak. A college president is paid to avoid this kind of thing.

David, you noticed the exact same thing I did. If students are "intimidated" by the peacable exercise of free association and speech, then they need to either suck it up or take an hour-long boat ride to Cuba, where that won't be a problem. I stand in awe of the sheer absurdity of this excuse, not to mention the nerve that is required to invoke the feelings of the students themselves in defense of a policy deliberately constructed to limit their freedom of expression. What an offensive joke the academy is, and how glad I am to have abandoned it.

Sensitivity-trainings and "Tunnels of Oppressions" suddenly seem like a wonderful idea. University administrators and professors should be forced to swallow a dose of their own medicine.

Wasn't Citrus College also involved in a recent altercation with FIRE in a case involving an adjunct instructor requiring students to write antiwar letters to the President? My God, how stupid can this administration be?

"For amy, I believe the legal problem colleges face is that, if they receive federal funding, their actions are restricted by the US Constitution, which prevents restrictions on the freedom of speech. 'No 'excuse' would apply."

Not exactly. Community colleges such as Citrus are subdivisions of the state, so they are bound by the same Constitution as the state. Private institutions, by contrast, are not state actors, whether they receive state funding, federal funding, both, or neither.

You may be thinking of the federal statutes that govern educational institutions that receive federal dollars, some of which have a Constitutional "smell" to them. One such law, for example, prohibits discrimination and pegs its definition on federal court decisions interpreting the 14th Amendment - meaning that if Michigan's affirmative racism programs are struck down for Michigan, they will be illegal for Stanford too, unless Congress turns around and amends the law. I don't think that these laws provide for a statutory version of the First Amendment, though; that's generally a question of university policy and/or contract law.

Even where the First Amendment does apply, some restrictions are still permissible, provided they meet the "strict scrutiny" test (i.e., are narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest). Thus, it is too broad to say that no excuses for any restrictions will apply; a few really good "excuses" will. On the other hand, "no excuses" is a lot closer to the real standard than Amy's "so long as they have some sort of excuse" non-standard. That sounds more like the rational basis (non-)test applicable to other constitutional provisions (which, essentially, go unenforced).

Ahhhh, but note the update for this post regarding a budget cut. This is inevitable, given the economic times and the ability of the administrators to focus decisionmakers' attention on the school's ability to generate bad publicity.

But also consider that Citrus presumably does not have budget to defend against lawsuits. They will presumably have to hire an outside law firm for this defense. In light of the shrinking pie available to all education, it's astonishing that administrators will submit to an open-ended commitment to pay attorneys to defend a bad case. If it were Harvard and this were a principle on which academic freedom depended, well yes. But this is diddly little Citrus College, and you can bet there'll be a lot less budget for part-timers next year.

Being the sole plaintiff in Stevens v. Citrus Community College District and Louis Zellers, I can shed some like on these idiots method of operation.

Since my goal was to merely have the laws of free speech upheld on a campus that I attend, I spent days discussing the issue with administrators, all the way to the top and then eventually in the form of a public address to the board of trustees.

I was consistently told that the position of the College was that the Free Speech Areas were constitutional permissiable. I then proceeded to write an eight page memorandum of law on the issue which I highlighted in legnth the current jurisprudence on the issue. I essentially pointed out that not only were their policy in violation of the U.S. Supreme Courts consitant examinanation of the reasonability of time, place, and manner restrictions, but that the shcool was engaing in viewpoint discrimination as it allowed certain individual and school funded clubs full access to the campus for free for alls, literally...they had a club that susponser a rap station that blasted music during one of my midterms and they allow the College Democratics to hold "education rallies" while denying indvidual republicans from holding Governor Davis recall petition signing.

Despite my legnthy letter, which included bluntly "please do not force your students to become distracted from their studies in legal battles that the College can neither afford nor win."

They ignored me, that is until I hired a team of attorneys. To which the college has done the same, my guess is these guys bill at least $400 an hour and they are in no hurry to settle this case, despite the fact that its a loser for them and my attorney has already one several identical cases in the very same court room.

To those individuals who have previously posted questioning my motive and what I plan to do when I graduated, well I respond that it doesn't really matter so long as I still have free speech.