On March 24th, Fox News ran a story about Emory University students receiving emergency counseling for Trump chalkings on campus. Quotes from offended students stated that many expressed “fear” and “pain” due to the written support for Trump.
Protestors on the quad went so far as to say, “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
A little hypocritical, don’t you think? These students want to fight for their freedom by prohibiting others’ freedom of speech? They want to love and support each other by prosecuting those who disagree with their political views? Whichever way you lean, I hope you see the danger these students’ mindsets pose to American liberty.
The facts
- Private institutions have the unique ability to limit freedom of expression. According to The Foundation of Individual Rights in Education, because private colleges are not state actors, the First Amendment “does not stop them from enacting speech-restrictive policies.”
- The First Amendment does not protect against obscenity, fighting words, defamation, child pornography, perjury, blackmail, true threats, incitement to imminent lawless action, and solicitation to commit crimes.
- No words used in the chalkings fit the categories above.
- Students did not receive prior approval for the chalkings.
To clarify, the chalkings appeared as “Trump, “Vote Trump,” and “Trump 2016.” What’s in a name, you say? To some Emory students, “Trump” is tantamount to racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Even more troubling, Emory’s President Jim Wagner twisted political expression into a threat to diversity, writing, “Students with whom I spoke heard a message, not about political process or candidate choice, but instead about values regarding diversity and respect that clash with Emory’s own.”
Deconstructing Wagner’s quote
- Wagner writes that “Vote Trump” is not a message about candidate choice. How much clearer does the message have to be? There’s the word vote followed by a presidential candidate’s name.
- He writes that students heard a message which clashed with Emory’s diversity. Good! Is that not what diversity is — a clash of identities and values pushing and pulling at each other in a shared space?
- Emory supposedly has its own definition of respect which Wagner refers to but fails to assert what it looks or sounds like. Obviously, it doesn’t look like freedom of expression; that would be disrespectful.
Because of the traumatizing event, Emory’s student government offered "emergency counseling" for those in fear of their safety on campus. Or should I say, for those fearful of political expression. Wagner is conducting an investigation to find these rogue freedom fighters and subject them to a conduct violation process. No doubt, these students’ names will become known and they will have to face a campus of discrimination because they had the courageous audacity to dissent from status-quo liberalism.
I hope to see more college students embracing political activism and reminding colleges that college is a place of failure, success, conflict, negotiation, education and freedom.
