122 Chapter 4Chapter 4 || Civil LibertiesCivil Libertiesincluding a student environmental group, a gay and bisexual student center, a
community legal office, an AIDS support network, a campus women’s center, and the
Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group. The Court ruled that mandatory
student fees could continue to support the full range of groups as long as the process
for allocating money was “viewpoint neutral.” The Court also said that student
referendums that could add or cut money for specific groups violated viewpoint
neutrality. The potential for the majority to censor unpopular views was unacceptable
to the Court, since “the whole theory of viewpoint neutrality is that minority views are
treated with the same respect as are majority views.”^64Hate Speech Whether or not freedom of speech should apply to hate speech has
been a controversial issue both on college campuses and in society generally. Do people
have a right to say things that are offensive or abusive, especially in terms of race,
gender, and sexual orientation? By the mid-1990s, more than 350 public colleges and
universities said no by regulating some forms of hate speech.^65
Many of these speech codes were struck down in federal court, but in the last
few years the issue has resurfaced on many college campuses. In addition to the
controversial speakers discussed in the chapter opener, a variety of “campus climate”
issues consumed dozens of schools. At Yale University in 2015, controversy erupted
over the response of a residential college faculty administrator, Erika Christakis, to
an e-mail students received cautioning them not to wear Halloween costumes that
could be racially or culturally insensitive. Christakis wrote that universities no longer
allowed students to be “a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive.”^66
She resigned a few weeks later,
saying, “ [T]he current climate at
Yale is not, in my view, conducive to
the civil dialogue and open inquiry
required to solve our urgent societal
problems.”^67 The president of the
University of Missouri also resigned
in 2015 after students, including
the football team, said that he was
racially insensitive and not open to
their demands for a more inclusive
and supportive environment on
campus. In 2017, Indiana University
students petitioned to remove part
of a mural that depicts the history of
the state using imagery of a burning
cross and white-hooded Klansmen.
University leaders compromised by
leaving the artwork but saying that
classes would no longer be held in the
lecture hall with the mural.^68
Another significant issue
combines the topics of symbolic
speech and hate speech. Can a
person who burned a cross on a
black family’s lawn be convicted
under a city ordinance that prohibits
conduct in St. Paul, Minnesota,
that “arouses anger, alarm,hate speech
Expression that is offensive or
abusive, particularly in terms of race,
gender, or sexual orientation. It is
currently protected under the First
Amendment.A historic mural illustrating a member
of the Ku Klux Klan provoked
controversy at Indiana University in
2017, with many students calling for
the removal of the offensive imagery.Full_05_APT_64431_ch04_102-147.indd 122 16/11/18 1:28 PM