University Students Deserve Human Rights

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | University campuses are strongholds of left liberalism where constitutionally protected rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, are routinely violated.

This September, make sure the students you care for pack protection of their civil liberties in with clothing and reference books.

This is essential for students who are male, white, conservative, openly Christian, or from affluent families.

Male. Speech codes -- or anti-harassment codes that function in the same manner -- are rampant on campuses. Since "women" are a group offered protection against "offense," the codes especially restrict the speech of males. Students accused of "sexual misconduct" -- from a crime as serious as rape to telling off-color jokes -- can face the university equivalent of a "star chamber" -- a secret proceeding -- in which they have no judicial rights even though the outcome could ruin their academic careers.

White. Whites are not only disadvantaged by admission policies that explicitly discriminate in favor of "minorities," they are also targeted by "hate speech" policies. A white CalPoly student was punished last month for posting an ad in the "public" multicultural center for a speech by a well-known black conservative; the speech compared welfare dependence to living "on the plantation." An offended black student called the police.

Conservative. The University of Miami recently denied recognition to a conservative club on the grounds that, since a Republican club already existed, another conservative group would be redundant. Yet liberal groups, including a Democratic club, abounded. Without such recognition a student group cannot use the tax-paid facilities to meet on campus.

Openly Christian. The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill recently threatened to remove all privileges and funding from the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship because adhering to Christian doctrine was a requirement for those assuming group leadership. Last year, Rutgers did "de-list" an IVCF group who refused to accept non-Christian leaders because it would violate their right to meet based on "shared belief."

Affluent. The University of California is pioneering a proposal that undergrads with family incomes exceeding $90,000 should pay as much as $3,000 more to attend despite the fact that those families would have paid more in taxes to support its nine "public" campuses.

How do you protect the rights and dignity of a student for whom you care?

One place to start is with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education that has been defending the victims in such cases ... and doing so with resounding success.

FIRE's most recent project directly addresses "the urgent need for students and parents to understand the legal and moral status of student rights on our nation's campuses and to understand the means to defend and assert these rights." It does so in the form of five books: three of which are currently available.

The free online guides offer the theory, history and legal precedents surrounding five specific areas of rights violation. But more than this. They offer specific and subtle advice on how to handle violations of those rights. Subtle because the guides carefully distinguish between obligations of private and public (state-funded) universities in relation to student "rights."

The Guide to Religious Liberty on Campus advises, "Consider Tufts University, Grinnell College, Williams College, Ball State University, Whitman College, Middlebury College, Randolph-Macon Women's College, the State University of New York at Oswego, Wichita State University, Castleton State College, and Purdue University." These are just some of the "schools that have sought to either ban outright or heavily regulate the activities of religious students or religious student groups."

The Guide to Religious Liberty explains that, if a public university permits any "expressive organization" -- those organized around a specific belief -- then it must allow religious ones on the same basis: equal access to campus facilities and funding, freedom from interference and due process. If a private university has a stated policy on religious toleration, then it may have a contractual obligation to sponsor religious groups on the same footing as others.

The Guide to Student Fees, Funding and Legal Equality on Campus explains, "Many students attending public colleges and universities are surprised and sometimes outraged to learn that school rules require them to fund groups that advocate ideas they find morally or politically unacceptable" -- from feminism to communism, from environmentalism to transgendered rights. Students ask, "How can universities force me, as a condition of getting an education here, to fund groups with which I morally disagree?"

This second guide explains whether mandatory funding is legal and how objecting students can defend themselves against the practice.

The Guide to Due Process and Fair Procedure on Campus states, "Students should know their rights and liberties ... If an innocent person is charged with wrongdoing, what protections should that innocent person have against being wrongly or arbitrarily punished and dishonored?"

The guide details precisely which judicial rights accused students retain and what they should do to protect themselves against arbitrary punishment.

The remaining two guides -- on free speech and on thought reform -- will be available by the end of September 2003.

The guides are essential to the civil liberties and human dignity of every university student. Let the students you care for know how to defend themselves against injustice.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Wendy McElroy is the editor of Ifeminists.com. She also edited Freedom, Feminism, and the State (Independent Institute, 1999) and Sexual Correctness: The Gender Feminist Attack on Women (McFarland, 1996). She lives with her husband in Canada. Comment by clicking here.

07/09/03: The PCspeak of Diversity
07/02/03: Rebuttable presumption of joint custody
06/18/03: A Conscientious Objector to the Gender War
06/04/03: Gender issues impacted by masculinists
05/28/03: The value of error
05/21/03: U.S. to Fund Gender Feminism in Africa?
05/14/03: Cut men: Do they not bleed?
05/07/03: Women with guns fight back
04/30/03: No oil for food
04/28/03: The Great Lie
04/16/03: War may redefine gun control
04/09/03: Why we must discuss a post-war U.S.
04/02/03: Leftist feminists using war as podium
03/26/03: Laying down 'the white woman's burden'
03/19/03: Iraq War may kill feminism as we know it
03/13/03: A woman to replace Saddam
02/19/03: Elder abuse demands family solutions
02/13/03: Iraqi women brutalized by Saddam
01/29/03: There ought not to be a law
01/22/03: Gambling with race and gender cards
01/02/03: The future of fatherhood
12/26/02: U.N. complicit in forced sterilizations
12/20/02: Compassion, kindness killed by fear, paranoia
12/11/02: Affirmative action insults immigrant contributions
12/04/02: Stand up for yourself
11/27/02: Feminist fighting: Aren't we all women?
11/20/02: Rights & responsibilities
11/14/02: Feminist "urban legends"
11/06/02: Equal access does not guarantee equal outcome
10/24/02: Battered Women's Syndrome: Science or sham?
10/17/02: I demand a civil society that respects the individual and acknowledges the existence of honest disagreement between human beings of good will
10/09/02: Abortion debate is about to be ratcheted up yet again
10/02/02: 'Restorative justice' offers battered women more options
09/25/02: Why is prez promising to embrace UN radical social engineering programs?
09/18/02: Dirty dealings kill men's panel
09/11/02: Taking back your power
09/05/02: Calm down, Hootie!
08/21/02: Will Congress empower a group of radical feminists to oversee money slated for Afghan women?
08/14/02: Empower the U.N. with power to sculpt American laws and institutions into the image of gender feminism!?
08/01/02: Practicing 'intellectual virtue'
07/24/02: All male, bad. All female, good: Your tax dollars at work
07/11/02: Put Up or Shut Up
07/03/02: NOW they've done it, again!
06/19/02: A dark cloud shades U.N. Women's Treaty
06/10/02: This Father's Day, send justice
05/31/02: When good women do nothing
05/28/02: Feminists claiming motherhood as liberal cause
05/20/02: Wounds in health care system are self-inflicted: Or, why "my son the lawyer" makes more sense
05/10/02: Are parents boycotting public schools?
05/03/02: Women can't be gun-shy about defense
04/25/02: The Bill of Intellectual Rights
04/19/02: World Bank or World Government?: The World Bank is blackmailing impoverished nations
04/12/02: Victims From Birth: Engineering Defects in Helpless Children Crosses the Line
04/05/02: The professor made me cry, now I will make him pay!
03/31/02: Doctors and teens --- parents be on guard
03/22/02: I was born, now I'm suing you!
03/15/02: The 21st Century is knocking at the barricaded door of feminism
03/08/02: Fun and games at the Ms mag Bulletin Board
03/01/02: Andrea Yates, NOW, and Feminist Jurisprudence
02/22/02: Lady, Your Slip is Showing
02/14/02: 'Abusing' Valentine's Day
02/11/02: Is NOW Pro-Choice or Pro-Abortion?
02/01/02: Are 'fathers' rights' a factor in male suicide?
01/25/02: Is the U.N. Running Brothels in Bosnia?
01/18/02: 'Freedom' at another's (moral) expense
01/11/02: Feminists hit Ground Zero with WTC funds grab
01/04/02: Males winning "diversity discrimination" cases is good?
12/21/01: Good will toward men
12/14/01: "Boss Tweed" feminism
12/07/01: Call me 'anti-woman'