As part of Constitution Week, the College Libertarians of Kennesaw State University will set up a “free speech wall” in an effort to raise student awareness of First Amendment rights on campus.
CLOKSU set up on the Campus Green Wednesday, toting with them four slabs of drywall to be propped up and primed in the hopes of giving the student body a chance to employ their right to free speech.
The idea of this unrestricted act of free speech is to allow students to publicize their thoughts and feelings completely free of censorship. Any student on campus can approach the boards, grab a marker and write whatever they choose. The members call this process “open forum,” which allows individuals to express their ideas and correspond with each other.
“We do the wall to let people freely express themselves in an open forum,” said Nathan Wilson, vice president for the College Libertarians of KSU. “It starts dialogue and exchanges of thoughts and ideas about what the student body is thinking about. We do it because the Socratic process is how you change the world. By facilitating an open forum of discussion, students can take those thoughts and ideas and share them with other people.”
Some students like the idea of having ability to express themselves freely. Lucas White, a freshman studying Communication said he feels like it will be fun to write on the wall.
“I think free speech in college is important because it’s normally the place where people can speak up for what they believe,” White said.
Freshman Business major Tristan Crawford said free speech also helps to facilitate discussion about policy-making.
“It’s important because nothing really gets done or progresses without considering all viewpoints,” Crawford said. David Pakkala, president of KSU’s Young Americans for Liberty said the free speech wall is important because free speech is a staple in our American freedom.
“Through this freedom we are allowed a dissenting voice towards our leaders and an alternative perspective to their policies. Free speech is the foundation of a free people and the greatest weapon we have against coercion,” he continued.
Wilson said the KSU classroom environment does not do much to promote free speech. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education developed a “speech code rating system” that ranks universities and colleges on a scale of green to red to indicate the proficiency of an institution’s free speech support. Last year, FIRE designated KSU a “yellow level” instituion, meaning the school has “some policies that could ban or excessively regulate protected speech,” according to the group’s website.
The student handbook addresses the issue of free speech in the “KSU Freedom of Assembly and Expression” section on page 168. It states that the “policy shall apply to all non-commercial speech on the Kennesaw State University campus and other KSU facilities.” The policy says that assembly such as this must take place in designated areas only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between the hours of 10:00 and 11:30 a.m. Things like “free speech zones” and other things that could restrict assembly and speech freedoms earned KSU the yellow rating.
“I think the school’s free speech stipulations are ridiculous and that if students want to express themselves they should have the right to do so without the university interfering in such a dramatic way,” said freshman Psychology major Steven Bedoya.
Wilson said he hopes the free speech wall will open student’s eyes to their First Amendment rights and how they can use those rights.
“We hope by getting people thinking, we can get people talking and then acting to create change,” he said.
