A pulpit, not a crowd

I blogged on Hosty v. Carter a few days back and mentioned that it had really only come to my attention when a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called to do an interview a week or so ago. Well the article showed up today and I’m quoted toward the bottom of it.

It’s an interesting piece by Megan Twohey – she goes beyond the simple debate over collegiate newspapers and discusses how the case could have repercussions for other university forums – from guest speakers to movie nights. Given this broad context, the potential impact of the ruling truly does, at first, seem alarming.

But the reality remains that so long as the decision only has teeth to bite that which is school-funded, speech is not truly being squandered. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has done nothing to prohibit students from raising money on their own to rent out a local venue for a speaker, having video nights in their private apartments of publishing independent newspapers. Merely being a student at a university isn’t an entitlement to exploit that school’s resources to promote a message you deem important. And anything more than comments made by raising your hand in class would usually fall under that category of utilizing the school’s resources.

Whether it is Speaker’s Corner in London or Capitol Square in Madison, people remain free to say just about anything (provided, of course, they not insult the queen in the former locale or engage in “fighting words” in the latter). And while these entitlements are seemingly fundamental, one would be hard pressed to find a similar right to speak before an audience – whether it is in the US Constitution or the Magna Carta.