Students at Northern Arizona University had the police called on them by the administration for handing out American flags to commemorate 911:
The first administrator was followed by another administrator, who told the students that the university could use “time, place and manner” rules to determine that they were not allowed to pass out flags there without a permit. This administrator was followed by yet another administrator who claimed that the First Amendment meant “free speech in a designated time, place, and manner.”
That’s a reading of the First Amendment that only a bureaucrat could love. The Supreme Court has indeed determined that the government may enforce time, place and manner restrictions on expression, but these restrictions must be reasonable, content-neutral, narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest and must leave open ample alternative means of communication. So when the expression consists of a couple of people handing out flags while standing against the wall of a large room, one wonders what “governmental interest” is involved in telling students they can’t do so.
The fourth administrator to confront the students repeated “time, place and manner” four times when the students challenged her on how the university could stop its own students from standing around and passing out flags. After that, NAU called the cops. A police officer (who looked like she’d rather be somewhere else) came and took the names of the two remaining participants, saying that it wasn’t a legal matter but a university code of conduct matter.
Until Monday evening, when NAU most likely realized how bad punishing people for this was going to look, the students faced charges of “failure to comply with a university official” and “interfering with university activities.” The first charge only made sense if “Hey, you two, stop passing out flags to commemorate 9/11” is the sort of order you think university officials should be giving, while the second only made sense if “not observing the anniversary of 9/11” counts as a university activity.
These are the people who should be first to go when the bubble pops.
I’m going to go way out on a limb and guess that UN flags would have been just fine.
The first amendment says no such thing. The whole point of permitting for public assembly is simply to prevent the Tragedy of the Commons: cases where everyone wants to assemble at the same place at the same time – it’s to prevent logistical nightmares. What’s described here doesn’t even approach that.
I hope FIRE is on this.
Lunancy may be to kind a word.
The interesting thing is that it appears as if the Admins coordinated their response.
I’m going to go way out on a limb and guess that UN flags would have been just fine.
Or Palestinian or Mexican ones.
I hope FIRE is on this.
Note who wrote the article.
Dunno, it depends.
If someone came into my Electric and Electronic Circuits classroom and started handing out American flags, I wouldn’t care it were the American flag or the Koran or the Bible or whatever. I would be taking whatever measures to maintain control over my classroom, and I do mean control. An instructor, be it a professor, lecturer, teaching assistant, whoever, needs to have control over what takes place in their classroom, and I won’t even enter the classroom of a subordinate without their permission on account of the need for an instructor to maintain control.
Now a student union or other university building is not a classroom, and universities commonly give wide latitude to what takes place there, certainly more so than an in-session classroom, but such a building is still University property, and in the case of a public institution, it may be State property. And I suppose a lot of latitude has been given to the anti-Scott Walker protestors to “set up shop” in the Wisconsin Capitol.
But I believe that such an institution has the authority to maintain some degree of control over what takes place in their buildings, and the bureaucratic rules are there for handling the “corner cases.” OK, students handing out flags on 9-11 is great, but what about Muslim students handing our crescent flags or Hare Krishna’s handing out flowers?
I am not saying that Muslims and Hare Krishna’s do not have First Amendment Rights; I am saying that a university is within their rights to regulate activities within their walls and apply their regulations equally and without prejudice to American patriots, Muslims, and Hare Krishnas, alike.
During the time of Mr. Assange’s being a guest of her Majesty the Queen of England and her constabulary, I was tempted to stand on the sidewalk outside the Concourse hotel during the feminist-science fiction convention WISCON and hand out the flag of Sweden, welcoming participants to the “ethnic-Scandinavian hospitality of Madison, Wisconsin”, but my wife has low tolerance for my participation in any manner of political provocation. And besides, the folks there would probably not have gotten the reference.
Paul: If activists started handing out Palestinian flags in your classroom, do you really think the University administration would come stop it? They’d don keffiyehs and join right in!
Speaking of “Lunacy”, NASA just unveiled the Senate Launch System (SLS).
I doubt the university’s actions are constitutional. The student union on a state university campus is pretty much a public forum. If the distribution were disruptive in some way, the university would be within its rights to tell the kids to go outside or something, but any reference whatsoever to the content of the students’ message (e.g., saying that they can regulate time, place, and manner, for instance) is evidence that the administration is regulating protected speech, not something else.
The last school administrator that tried to control my actions got fired. That’s what needs to happen to idiots.
Paul, if I were to hand anything out in your classroom the only disruption would be you trying to stop it. I take classes to learn, not to be controlled.
Teachers deserve respect and a classroom needs decorum. But thought police is a step too far.
“most powerful rocket ever built” will be less than the Saturn V. They did get rid of solid boosters (or did they?) and will use existing engines.
Only $18b, doesn’t include operational costs of course.
Can SpaceX bid on those launches? Is 70mT $17b better than 50mT? Will they hold launch costs to only 40% more than what SpaceX will charge?
“Paul, if I were to hand anything out in your classroom the only disruption would be you trying to stop it. I take classes to learn, not to be controlled.”
The Left is replete with various idiocies, but the Right is trying very, very hard to exhibit complete ignorance regarding the teaching and education enterprise.
I am not trying to impart any ideology in my classroom, but there seem to be people on the Right dense enough to think that v = i R, p = v i, i = C dv/dt or v = L di/dt constitutes some Socialist plot. And if you come into my classroom and disrupt the proceedings to hand out any kind of flag, I will contact University Police.
Uh, this was in the Student Union, on a Sunday. Can we all relax just a bit?
Ya, big difference between disrupting class and handing stuff out in the commons.
But they could probably sell weed all day without the administrators caring a wit.
Stoners to the left of themStoners to the right of themAdmins in front themHoller’d and thunder’d;Scorn’d at with law and jailBoldly they gave our flagsUnto the LumberjacksUntil the police didStop the two students
Hrm… Didn’t format right.
if you come into my classroom and disrupt the proceedings to hand out any kind of flag, I will contact University Police.
Are you presuming that qualifier or is it just assumed?
Further, come into my classroom suggests an outsider and I would agree that would be disruptive. I was thinking of an actual member of your classroom sharing with other members. As long a decorum isn’t disrupted what’s the problem? Are you one of those that thinks attention must be on teacher and nowhere else at all times?
We once called teachers master, but in fact they are servants and very expensive ones these days. The good ones don’t have inflated egos. The only people that should object would be other students if their education is being disrupted. The teacher should of course use good judgement in determining if that is true and act accordingly.
Forgive me for being pedantic, but we are talking about the tenth anniversary of a very significant event. Words fail.
“These are the people who should be first to go when the bubble pops.”
In most revolutions, especially Socialist ones, these are the people who take charge to staff the secret police, bureaucracy, and party organs.
No, Paul Milenkovic needs to change the facts in evidence so he can pummel his strawmen all week long. Facts are buzz killers. Further, there are some hypothetical people on the Right who think Ohm’s Law is a Socialist plot. Again, no evidence, but he simply must change the subject and beat up on them regardless.
When I first went to college I ran into an EE grad student (or some such thing) who thought semiconductor holes were a conspiracy, as holes can’t really flow. I didn’t query him further to find out if it was a socialist conspiracy or something from the John Birch Society, but assumed he really didn’t understand how changing your reference frame can make analysis much, much easier.
Granted but I always found the idea of holes moving backwards kind of funny.