But!!!
After further review there were to parts to the case and ruling.
The first was the handing out of the papers telling people to stay away. That was full of lies and wrong.
But the second half dealt with the student senate and tellung the school to control and censor them.
Found this in a story about the case:
Some higher education observers worry that the ruling will have a chilling effect on free expression. A key concern is that colleges, fearful of litigation, will clamp down on student speech.
“This creates a very heavy incentive for institutions, particularly private institutions, to police the speech of their students and student governments, student organizations, student newspapers,” said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. “Because the decision suggests that an institution not only can punish unprotected speech—which is not a controversial position—but that the institution must punish it or must censor it, or [the college] becomes liable for that speech if it is defamatory.”
Jeffrey Sachs, a political science professor at Acadia University who often writes about free speech on campus, offered a similar opinion in a
Twitter thread. He noted that the suit hinged on two actions: the libelous fliers distributed by staff and the Student Senate resolution.
“It’s the second action that really worries me. Basically, the court held that since Oberlin authorizes the student senate, subsidizes it, provides a supervisor, and allows it to post its documents on school property, it is legally responsible for the student senate’s speech,” Sachs tweeted.
While Sachs notes the dean erred in handing out the fliers, “the senate resolution issue feels much more complicated and nothing to celebrate.” The ruling, he suggests, implies that colleges must scrutinize the speech they provide a platform for and “have a legal duty to censor.”
Given the financial implications, Steinbaugh suspects colleges will be more likely to take a hard look at student speech and perhaps even diminish the support they provide for free expression. After all, enabling student speech may be more costly for colleges than simply stifling it.
“It creates a financial incentive for institutions to limit the channels through which students can exercise their expressive rights, or to diminish the resources that institutions commit to allowing students to express themselves, whether that’s through a student organization or student government or a student newspaper,” Steinbaugh said.
www.theblaze.com
