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A federal appeals court in Colorado has found that administrators at Lewis-Palmer High School did not violate Erica Corder’s rights when they forced her to apologize for remarks she made in a 2005 valedictorian’s address.
Corder’s speech — one of fifteen short addresses by students at the graduation — had been cleared by school officials in advance, but abandoned the agreed-upon text, instead delivering one that included the following lines:
I need to tell you about someone who loves you more than you could ever imagine. He died for you on a cross over 2,000 years ago, yet was resurrected and is living today in heaven. His name is Jesus Christ. If you don’t already know him personally I encourage you to find out more about the sacrifice he made for you so that you now have the opportunity to live in eternity with him.
Administrators then refused to give Corder her diploma until she made a public apology. Corder did so, but later sued the school.
In its ruling, the court found that because the graduation was a “school-sponsored activity,” and the public might reasonably believe that Corder’s speech had been approved by school officials, the punishment was not an unconstitutional one.
Corder’s attorney told the Student Press Law Center that censorship of, or punishment for, graduation speeches is improper. “When the student goes to the lectern to speak,” he said, “it’s their own words.”
The Providence, Rhode Island mayor’s proposal to slap a “student municipal impact fee” on the city’s college students is being introduced as legislation in the RI state legislature.
The student tax, which I discussed here last month, would be an assessment of $150 per semester for all undergraduate and graduate students at the city’s four private universities. It’s intended to help close a multi million dollar municipal budget deficit.
Mayor Cicilline also put forward an alternate funding mechanism — a bill that would allow the city to collect fees directly from its largest tax-exempt institutions (the four universities plus five private hospitals). That bill would permit the assessment of such fees up to twenty-five percent of the taxes that the institutions would pay if they were not exempt.
There’s a good short post up at the law blog The Volokh Conspiracy on the do’s and don’ts of bringing a speaker to campus. (It’s intended for Federalist Society clubs, but most of the advice is universal.)
Here’s the meat of it:
Debates seem to get more of a turnout than lectures.
If you can’t set up a head-to-head debate, set up a two-person panel, or a talk-plus-commentary.
Events that involve a local professor — a debate, a panel, or even the professor’s just introducing a guest speaker — will probably get more of a turnout.
Publicize, publicize, publicize, using all the tools at your disposal — e-mail, flyers in mailboxes, postings on bulletin boards, postings on class chalkboards, if your school allows that, and whatever else you can think of.
For topics, the usual sexy ones are good: affirmative action, gun control, abortion, church-state separation, campaign finance, and the like. Other topics can work as well, especially if you can find a well-known visitor. But generally speaking the old standards work well.
If you want to bring in a relatively prominent speaker from out of town, offer to coordinate with other chapters in your city, so that the speaker can give several talks on one trip.
Provide lunch — the better, the better.
June 4 update: Although it wasn’t the point of this post, I should probably mention that I’m available for campus speaking engagements myself.
The administration of Liberty University is moderating its position on the campus’s College Democrats club, which it dissolved a little over a week ago.
In a May 15 email, LU Vice President for Student Affairs Mark Hine told the club’s president that the College Democrats was “no longer going to be recognized as a Liberty University club,” citing university regulations requiring that all campus groups and their parent organizations adopt policies and positions consistent “with the distinctly Christian mission of the University, the Liberty Way, the Honor Code, or the policies and procedures promulgated by the University.” Groups in conflict with those principles, he noted, could not “be approved, recognized or permitted to meet on campus, advertise, distribute or post materials, or use University facilities.”
Yesterday, however, in an email to Rod Snyder, an official with the Young Democrats of America, LU chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. took a different stance. The College Democrats, he said, would not be allowed to use Liberty University’s name, but they “will not be prevented from meeting on campus or having a club.”
Fallwell claimed that Snyder had been “misinformed” about Liberty’s position on the CD, and he seems to have grasped onto an ambiguity in Hine’s original email as the basis for his new position. Although Hine said that CD would not be recognized as a club because of the Democratic party’s views, he did not explicitly say that the group would not be allowed to meet on campus. He strongly implied it, to the point that it’s the only sensible reading of his letter, but he didn’t say it explicitly.
This isn’t a complete reversal of the university’s May 15 policy, but it is a significant retreat, and a major victory for the school’s College Democrats.
Sunday morning update: Liberty University offered another olive branch to the College Democrats on Friday, offering full recognition if the group would affiliate with the national organization Democrats for Life rather than the Democratic Party. On its face, this seems like a plausible compromise, as the LU College Dems identifies itself as a pro-life organization.
There is, however, a hitch.
Democrats for Life does not endorse or campaign on behalf of pro-choice candidates. Ever. And if the Liberty University College Democrats were to affiliate with DfL, they wouldn’t be able to do so either. As LUCD president Brian Diaz pointed out to a local newspaper, that means that the group would have to sit on the sidelines of the 2012 presidential election.
Update: Liberty University has backed down somewhat from its original ban. Details here.
At Liberty University in Virginia, the campus chapter of the College Democrats was informed on May 15 that because the principles of the Democratic Party contradict “Christian doctrine” and “the moral principles held by Liberty University,” the club would no longer be recognized by the university.
The College Democrats chapter was recognized last October. LU, which was founded by conservative activist and preacher Jerry Falwell, has long hosted a chapter of the College Republicans.
The governor of Virginia and all four major candidates to replace him — three Democrats and a Republicans — have all said they oppose the university’s decision. The national Young Democrats are circulating a petition opposing the move, and Rachel Maddow hosted the club’s president Brian Diaz last night.
Liberty isn’t the only conservative religious college to ban a political club recently — administrators at Idaho’s Brigham Young University dissolved the College Democrats and the College Republicans this winter, saying they wanted the campus to be “politically neutral.” The Rexburg, Idaho Standard Journal has a long, thorough story on that decision.
studentactivism.net 
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