Northern Kentucky University keeps issuing strong endorsements of free speech on campus ... but as coverage of the Sally Jacobsen debacle continues, the hypocrisy of NKU's endorsements becomes increasingly clear. NKU not only has a speech code, it appears, but also confines students expression to a "free speech zone" and compels students to get their flyers, demonstrations, and so on pre-approved by university administrators. Both are chilling bureaucratic moves that value institutional control over student expression far more than the expression itself; both are also serious constitutional issues that the school ought to face.

I spent a (regretable) period of time at the U of KY in Lexington, and they had the same 'free speech' areas that NKU has. I found that they were only enforced when anything smacking of liberality was in question. Pro-war demonstrators or evangelical christion prosetylizers were allowed free roam. Of course the overwhelingly conservative student population thought that was just peachy.