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The University of Maryland, College Park says it “must allow” the campus Student Power Party to stage a free speech forum tonight, even though that forum will include a viewing of excerpts from Pirates II, the film that the university refused to allow students to screen on campus last week.
Meanwhile, the state legislator who over the weekend threatened to eliminate UMD’s funding if the film was shown is now saying he may seek to cut the university’s capital budget.
Here’s the Facebook page for tonight’s screening, which was scheduled to start at 7 pm, and Gawker’s take on the whole thing.
Tuesday update: The forum and screening went off without a hitch, and the state senator who was threatening to cut UMD’s funds backed down — sort of. He now says that he won’t seek to cut funding over last night’s event, but will press universities to implement policies that say “you can’t have university-sponsored XXX entertainment on campus” going forward.
About two hundred students showed up last night, watching the first half hour of the movie after a discussion of campus speech issues. When asked why they hadn’t shown the whole thing Student Power Party spokesperson Malcolm Harris said “you’d be hard-pressed to find a lot of students who want to sit around for a two-and-a-half-hour viewing of pornography on a Monday night.”
Student government elections are taking place today and tomorrow at UMD, with the Student Power Party running as one of four slates.
A high school student in Virginia’s Fairfax County has received a two-week suspension and a threat of expulsion … for taking her birth control pill at lunch.
Oakton High School considers bringing prescription drugs to school one of the most serious violations a student can commit — it brings a harsher punishment than use of heroin or LSD, and the same penalty as possession of a handgun on school property.
The student’s mother was aware of, and supportive of, her decision to go on the pill. Birth control pills are most effective if taken at the same time every day, and the student began taking them at lunch over the summer. Neither the student nor her mother was aware that the punishment for continuing to do so in the fall could be so severe.
The student faced a hearing before school officials on Thursday, and has yet to hear whether she will be expelled.
Thanks to Amplify Your Voice for the heads-up on this story.
August 5 update: Stephen Colbert ran a segment on the incident on Monday night’s Colbert Report.
The University of Maryland Diamondback has a strong editorial up this morning on the college’s porn film controversy. Excerpts:
This isn’t just about state legislators and free speech. University administrators’ decision-making process last week demonstrates how little regard they have for student input. […] Administrators might persuasively argue they won’t support hate-speech events that discriminate against a religious group or an ethnic group. In the same vein, they might have argued the canceled event would have degraded women.
But such a decision must be made in a public forum, with as wide a segment of stakeholders as can possibly be assembled. Deeming material inappropriate behind closed doors is the fast road toward truly unjust distributions of resources, and frankly, to discrimination. […]
It’s easy to devalue the precedent administrators have set in the context of a bunch of hormonal college students in a tizzy to see some skin. But what happens when federal funding for stem-cell research comes up? What happens when administrators decide whether a speaker on Israel or Palestine is engaging in hate speech? So grab your swords and muskets, mateys, because a decision this egregious can’t be quietly tolerated. It’s time to rock the boat.
The Student Power Party is still planning to hold a screening of the film and a free speech forum on campus tonight. No word yet on whether the administration will allow that event to take place.
First the distributors of the porn flick Pirates II grabbed the spotlight by offering their movie free of charge for screenings on college campuses.
Then Republicans in the Maryland state legislature grabbed the spotlight by threatening to cut government funding to any college that showed the movie.
Now candidates for the University of Maryland’s student government are grabbing the spotlight by screening the movie on campus in defiance of an administration veto.
The Student Power Party, a slate running in student government elections scheduled for this Tuesday and Wednesday, have announced that they will be running Pirates II in a lecture hall on Monday night — election eve. They’ll be holding a forum on free speech before the show.
More information on the SPP can be found here, here, and here. They’ve also got a Twitter account and a pretty good campaign ad.
Monday morning update: Here’s the latest on SPP’s plans for tonight, from the UM Diamondback.
Iowa’s supreme court has unanimously granted legal recognition to same-sex marriages!
More cool details:
- The ruling will take effect on April 24, three weeks from today.
- Two of the justices behind the unanimous opinion were appointed by Republicans.
- The decision is based on the Iowa state constitution, so it cannot be appealed to any other court.
- It appears that the earliest the decision could be overturned by constitutional amendment is November 2012.
- Such an amendment would require approval by the Iowa state legislature prior to a popular referendum.
The majority leaders of both houses of the state legislature can be expected to oppose any effort to overturn the decision by constitutional amendment — they released a joint statement today hailing the ruling as an example of “Iowa common sense and Iowa common decency.”
It’s been a long, long time coming, but I know … a change is gonna come.
studentactivism.net 
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