have been overlooked. In the past five years, the number of hate crimes that have been reported to the FBI has increased by 3,743. Hatred on campuses is most often directed at minority groups that are easily identifiable by their clothing, skin color, body shape, intelligence, sexuality, or behavior. It is the duty of the government to stop hate crime because such speech can emotionally harm the person attacked. The counterpoint to that is that the government’s primary job is to protect citizens’ rights. By censoring speech, a clear attack has been made on the freedom of speech of American’s. Because actual violence and physical harm are illegal, making the speech version of violence illegal would bring about many controversies. Even though many controversies would come out of a law preventing hate speech, the effect it has on social aspects would be much greater. Speech codes are also said to hinder the free exchange of ideas on school campuses. Simple speech and academic speech are two distinctly different things. Speech is what you say during class, to your friends, and anything you say aloud on campus grounds. Even though academic speech is included in regular speech, academic speaking is based on statistics, ideas, and facts. No matter how many speech codes are made, academic speech cannot be taken away. Students need the academic speech of their peers to learn. Even if some freedoms to speak on college campuses are taken away, academic speech rights cannot be taken away. People say that academic speech should not be a right given to students because students are too young anyways, that students do not need the right to speak their mind. That is illogical because students are learners, they are always learning new things and they need to be learning all aspects and opinions on a subject, no matter if they believe in it or not. Free speech zones on college campuses and in public areas are pointless because of how many rules and stipulations are put on them.
Some universities, such as Texas Tech, have taken down their designated free-speech zones. Public places that still have free-speech zones have many rules on them. Just to be able to use one of the “zones”, a person has to go through many levels of clearance and review. An argument to that is that free speech zones give people the rights that they want if they try hard enough. If a person really wants to speak their mind in a public place, they should not mind going through the supplements. Free speech zones are futile because they are so limiting that they are not “free” zones
anymore. If everyone followed laws correctly, these laws would not need to be made. Nevertheless, that does not happen. These are just a few of the subjects that need to be addressed to solve the problem of free speech on college campuses. These laws must be made or changed to make college campuses better places to be. Freedom to speak on college campuses should be a freedom given to everyone without question, and their limitations should be a norm around all public college campuses.
Works Cited:
First Amendment- Free Speech in Schools- Ninth Circuit Holds that Teacher Speech in School-Related Settings Is Necessarily Government Speech
French, David "Victory for Free Speech at Texas Tech." FIRE, 5 October 2004. Web. 26 November 2012.
Sullum, Jacob. "Bully for you? Free speech on campus." Reason June 2012: 14+. General OneFile. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.