The Constitution
guarantees the right to free speech, but don’t try to pass out copies of it at
Modesto Junior College in California. A student at the school who tried to pass
out pocket-size pamphlets of the very document that memorializes our rights got
shut down on Sept. 17 – a date also known as Constitution Day. Campus authorities told 25-year-old Robert
Van Tuinen, who caught the whole thing on videotape, he could only pass out the
free documents at a tiny designated spot on campus, and only then if he scheduled
it several days in advance. “Watching
the video is a combination of depressing and nauseating, to see what rigamarole
students have to go through just to express themselves on campus,” said Robert
Shibley, senior vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in
Education (FIRE), which has taken on campus speech codes around the nation.
Van Tuinen,
who said he’d read up on the school’s regulations and expected to get chased
away from outside the student center, went to FIRE with the video. The foundation
penned an email letter to the school’s administration on Van Tuinen’s behalf
early Thursday, but Shibley said there had been no response later in the day. Read more:
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