The Watchman

Remember in the 1960s, when it was chic to question authority and challenge the establishment?

The free speech movement at UC Berkeley, which witnessed the rise of a mass student mobilization and the first legal takeover of a campus building made headlines at the time and sparked a hippie counterculture.  Today, these aging hippies have changed their mantra to “accept authority without question.”

UC Berkeley, birthplace of the free speech movement, has permitted a rise in anti-free speech through speech codes, shouting down of conservative speakers, intimidation, threats, theft of publications, and burning of books.  The universities, including most, are teeming with restrictions on students’ freedom of speech.

Alan Charles Kors, founder of the Foundation of Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, said, “Such codes are a moral, educational and legal scandal in American higher education.  A nation that does not educate in liberty will not preserve it and will not even know when it is lost.”

Most universities were founded on the notion of disseminating and advancing knowledge through scholarship and inquiry.  Although such principles are recognized as central to any school’s mission, history has witnessed several lapses, such as during the late 1980s and early 1990s when universities set up speech codes and other restrictions to accommodate the growing diversity of the student body and an increasingly vocal number of students.

During the past two decades, America’s universities have largely abandoned any respect for free speech, due process and the very concept of intellectual debate.  For instance, university administrators have regularly punished students and faculty for their speech, writings and membership in campus groups.  They’ve adopted speech codes to restrict free and open discourse for students and faculty through “free speech zones” and overly board sexual harassment policies.

In November, the University of Delaware’s diversity training program was dropped after FIRE made public the details of its Orwellian program.  Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes were required to attend training sessions, floor meetings and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants.

The RAs who facilitated these meetings were taught in the diversity training manual “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.  By this definition, people of color cannot be racists…”

Indiana State, for example, currently prohibits speech through “mail, telephone, computer messages, or any other means of communication to insult, threaten, or demean.”  So watch out online jokes, photos and comments on Internet sites like Facebook and MySpace could get you in trouble, even if our school claims to respect free speech.

The university also outlaws “jokes,” “suggestive gestures” and even asking a person on a date.

How did America’s universities with the obligation to pass on freedom and liberty to the next generation allow restrictive speech codes to proliferate?  Isn’t this a place where everyone who attends can have his or her ideas questioned?

Critical voices would be silent were student rules and regulations at Indiana State and elsewhere applied to the letter.  Speech codes would lead students to believe they cannot live with freedom or the equivalent of the First Amendment.  Anyone who tells you cannot live with freedom is definately not your friend.

Proponents of speech codes argue that restricting verbal or physical conduct creates a safe environment for learning that is free from potential hostile speech.  They also add that selective censorship, forced sensitivity training and unconstitutional bans on offensive speech are isolated incidents.

Think again.  Groups like FIRE receive thousands of complaints each year, mostly from conservative students whose universities selectively apply speech codes only to them.

They recently released a 2007 report on campus speech codes revealing that 346 schools surveyed maintain policies that clearly restrict speech that is protected by the First Amendment.

Examples are not hard to find:

• Northeastern University in Boston prohibits students from using the university’s network to “[t]ransmit or make accessible material, which in the sole judgment of the University is offensive….”

• Florida Gulf Coast University prohibits “expressions deemed inappropriate.”

• At The Ohio State University, students in the residence halls are instructed: “Do not joke about differences related to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, ability, socioeconomic background, etc.”

Despite this, any of the speech codes at America’s universities would likely not survive a legal challenge.

In 2005, Indiana State expunged an unconstitutional speech code from the books that restricted the display of the American flag after a student inquiry.

The policy did not apply to the university poles — it said “the display of the national, state, and other appropriate flags on the campus.” This confusion about the policy proved it was too vague and needed to be revised.

FIRE president David French described the policy as “ripe for abuse by administrators looking to silence viewpoints they do not like: by mere whim, permission to fly the American flag or a rainbow gay-rights flag or any other flag could conceivably be denied on the grounds of ‘offending’ someone, which would be an obvious violation of the First Amendment.”

What happens when faculty is allowed to profess their ideological briefs to unexpecting students and emphases on “tolerance” includes heckling conservative speakers?

In what is now expected on America’s universities former U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales was harassed during his Nov. 19 speech at the University of Florida.  At one point, two UF students jumped on staged and stood next to Gonzales during his speech, wearing black hoods over their heads and orange jumpsuits depicting inmates in Guantanamo Bay.

This incident shows the hypocrisy of students who are taught to respect free speech, but only if their ideas is heard.  And this isn’t the first time it has happened.

Days earlier, a routine CIA informational session were suddenly disrupted on the campus of the UC Santa Barbara.  A small group of student protesters dressed as clowns ending the session by waterboarding a fellow protester and chasing a CIA recruiter to his car.  As one blogger noted, “nothing says ‘freedom’ like preventing people from giving a presentation to people who want to hear it.”

What is happening is that speech codes are restricting certain kind of constitutionally protected speech and people from the far-left are disrupting conservative speakers.  This shows that liberals cannot fairly win on ideas alone. For example, no conservative rushed on the stage when Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University.

Kors argues that America’s universities give “students a moral agenda upon arrival, subjects them to mandatory political reeducation, sends them to sensitivity training, submerges their individuality in official group identity, intrudes upon private conscience, treats them with scandalous inequality, and when it chooses, suspends or expels them.”

Freedom is gradually being undermined on America’s universities for ideological purposes and students should be made aware of it.

Last semester many ISU students had the opportunity of viewing the movie Sicko on campus. During the film Michael Moore compares the inadequacies of the American health system with the advantages of both the socialist and communist health systems. By following this formula Michael brilliantly leads the viewer to the conclusion that he desires. The viewer is supposed to come out of the film feeling that America needs either socialized health care or a similar system in America. The film however shows you only half of the story. Many of the dark sides of the European and Cuban systems are ignored.

Michael is indeed correct in that there are definitely problems with the American Health care system. What he doesn’t mention however is the over-regulation along with government mandates that do not permit the free market to work in the American health care system. Over-regulation not big HMO’s are the primary reason America’s system is seeing hard times.

Most people do not know that America has many aspects already of a universal system.

The 1986 federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act make many services available to Americans regardless of their citizenship. Americans and Illegals partake of our system all the time without paying.

It is also insinuated that America has an unfounded fear of Communism. What is not mentioned in the film are the 6 million murdered in the Ukraine and USSR by Stalin and Brezhnev. He also conveniently forgets to mention the 2 million Cambodians slain by Pol Pot. I haven’t seen a communist re-education video but Sicko gives me personally an idea of what one might have been like.

It is beyond me that some of the same people that criticize FEMA’s actions during Katrina, which denounce our actions at Abu Ghraib & Guantanamo Bay, and claim Bush lied  people died come to the conclusion that our government is capable of providing sufficient health care to eveyone in America?

Fifteen-years-old, unwed, and pregnant is not exactly the kind of stuff fairy tales are made of. However, this was my life.

I will never forget the moment it dawned on me that I may be pregnant or that long night in the hospital when my suspicions were confirmed by a brunette nurse who came over to my ER cubicle around 2 a.m. and said, “Well, hon, it looks like you are pregnant.”

Instantly, all of my options ran through my head: abortion, adoption, or keep it.
Despite growing up in a very Christian, pro-life home, I couldn’t completely rule out abortion as an option. Actually, because I grew up in a Christian home, I was even more concerned about my family finding out I was pregnant. I knew it would be a huge disappointment for them.

Not only, I thought, would I disappoint my family, but I wondered what everyone at school would think. I was only a sophomore in high school. I had seen other pregnant girls at school, and they seemed so different from me. I couldn’t believe I was going to be one of them.

I looked up abortion clinics online, found one here in Louisville, and called to find out more information. The lady on the phone asked, “Do you want to have an abortion?”

I answered, “Yes.”

To this day, and probably for the rest of my life, I will remember what it felt like to hear myself answer yes to that question. It felt like a hundred bricks were pressing on my heart.

Then the lady at the clinic went on to tell me the procedure would cost $600 and that they only perform abortions on Saturday mornings.

Yet, I never went to that clinic, and I never had that abortion. Instead, I confessed to my family that I was pregnant and despite their sadness, they were loving and compassionate. I’m positive that teenage pregnancy wasn’t something my parents would have planned for their daughter, but in reality, it was their daughter’s life and they loved me through it.

Just last night I watched the movie “Bella.” At the beginning, the narrator states, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” This made me smile.

I never planned for my life to go the way it has. I never planned to become a mother at such a young age—but I also never knew I’d be so happy that I did.
The famous author, C.S. Lewis, often used the phrase, “surprised by joy,” and I believe that phrase could be the theme of every teenage mother’s life.
Getting pregnant at 15 and raising my son has not been an easy experience. Although I have had amazing support from family members on both sides, it has still been the source of many struggles and tears. However, it has also been the source of countless joys and laughter.

Of course, there are some difficult days when I am frustrated and just wish I could have a so-called “normal life.” But it is times like these that my son, Jonathan, tells me he loves me, learns to count to a higher number than he could before,
tells me a new joke he has memorized, or learns how to write a new letter of the alphabet, and once again, I am surprised by joy.

You can’t always plan your life or understand it. Teenage pregnancy is definitely one of those things you don’t plan for or understand.

If you are struggling as a young mother or father, you’re the family member of a young parent, or you are pregnant now, I want assure you that although things may seem hopeless at the moment and you may feel that your life is ruined, you are wrong.

Every day I look at my son, and I thank God that I did not abort him.
No matter how tough raising a child can be as a teenager, you will be amazed by how often you find yourself “surprised by joy.”

Ms. Wilkins is a pre-law student at Indiana University-Southeast and ambassador for the Leadership Institute. She recently joined the U.S. Army.