Posted on 08/05/2014 8:08:34 PM PDT by bamahead
The U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner claims campus speech codes need to be tightened as college students are still “developing” and cannot yet handle certain information.
Speaking during a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) briefing on sexual harassment law in education, Democrat Michael Yaki likened restricting free speech on college campuses to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 decision to ban the death penalty for minors.
During the briefing, Yaki said hostile environments on college campuses can occur from fraternities holding “slave auction[s]” or celebrating Latino culture by “making everyone dress as janitors and mop floors.”
“Certain factors in how the juvenile or adolescent or young adult brain processes information is vastly different from the way that we adults do,” Yaki said according to a transcript from Eugene Volokh, a law professor and publisher of the blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, who also testified at the briefing. “So when we sit back and talk about what is right or wrong in terms of First Amendment jurisprudence from a reasonable person’s standpoint, we are really not looking into the same referential viewpoint of these people, of an adolescent or young adult, including those in universities.”
Yaki made these claims while questioning Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonprofit organization advocating for civil liberties in higher education nationwide.
A spokesperson from FIRE declined to comment to Campus Reform as the USCCR has requested the organization wait to make any media comment until after the official transcript from the briefing is released.
“In the meantime, I would point you to the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which extended the franchise to 18-year-olds. FIRE has long argued that if college students can vote and can even be sent off to fight in wars, we must grant them full political rights—and that prominently includes their First Amendment rights,” Robert Shibley, senior vice president at FIRE, did tell Campus Reform.
During the briefing, Yaki said hostile environments on college campuses can occur from fraternities holding “slave auction[s]” or celebrating Latino culture by “making everyone dress as janitors and mop floors.” Yaki also decried campus pageants and other activities in which women “parade around in skimpy clothing and turn in some show or something.”
“[B]ecause of the unique nature of a university campus setting, I think that there are very good and compelling reasons why broader policies and prohibitions on conduct in activities and in some instances speech are acceptable on a college campus level that might not be acceptably say in an adult work environment or in an adult situation,” he said.
Yaki told Campus Reform in an email that he uses briefings as “opportunities to pose questions that help me understand the challenges of the issue” as it “helps clarify—or solidify—or highlight—the difficulty of grappling with a particular issue.”
Yaki also told Campus Reform that he has considered himself a “First Amendment absolutist” for much of his life.
“If there is a way to strike a balance between First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, it will have to [be] done with great restraint and narrowly tailored to pass constitutional muster,” he said. “Frankly, I haven't seen one, and imposing a prior restraint policy w [sic] punishment plainly violates the First Amendment.”
“[H]ow do we work to increase the safety and security, both mental and physical, of all our students in a way that doesn't require infringing on the First Amendment,” Yaki said. “That is the million dollar question that, to me, the briefing was intended, and which more thought and work needs to be done.”
Prior to working as the Civil Rights Commissioner, Yaki was a senior advisor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and also served on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors where he was subsequently sued by the city for around 70 instances of illegal lobbying.
The average five year old is smarter than this bureaucrat jerk.
There’s a purpose for two-year community colleges where an occupational theme would help the lesser of society’s public education system achieve something of value.
Pushing the same crowd of lessers into a four-year college program....dumbing the program down to meet the lesser capability....and just accepting this as normal is a bogus attitude.
This is why we now have four-year graduates working as the rental car franchise manager at various airports....a job which until the early 1990s was simply a high school graduate guy in his forties or fifties. Such managers now utilize their college skills to note the trend with Fords or Chevys....or just making schedules for the crew to clean the cars when they are turned in.
I’m pretty sure college kids are evolved enough for free speech , but I am absolutely certain a sizable percentage of the faculty and administrative staffs of most of our Universities are not evolved enough for free speech
Free speech for mer, but not for thee
Even worse, four-year schools have a whole array of “remedial classes” that the tokens are required to take to bring them up to a high-school graduate level (white guys aren’t in those classes because they are rejected outright); they don’t count as credits, and are an indistry unto themselves.
When I was in school people I knew that went to community colleges often did so briefly because their state schools of choice had initially rejected them; after a semester or two they could transfer into a four-year school. Nowadays I see community colleges getting renewed life from 1) people who can’t afford state schools, but are college-oriented, and 2) people looking for work in a field that requires college - like police officers - but an associates degree will fulfill the requirement.
Lowering the standards for preferred minorities to enter four-year schools is just a business decision; whether by grants, financial aid, or loans, the schools are “selling” seats. Private schools end up with the least-qualified, as they’re forced at this point to take anyone willing to pay.
But they are smart enough to vote multiple times (at home and school) for Democrats, right?
Revolt is coming.
An argument for returning voting age to 21.
> As yutes they screamed themselves illy about the dastardly
> CIA, the treachery of United Fruit, and the shocking speech
> oppression on campus.
Yep, I was one of them. I’m still fighting the same battles. The favoring of one identity group over another. The tendency towards totalitarianism on the Federal and State level. The limitations imposed on the right of free expression. The encroachments on the right to defend oneself. Burgeoning and unaccountable government bureaucracies. Police brutality. Corruption in the courts, the legislatures, and the executive, of both the states and the feds.
Nothing’s changed in these 50 years except the names and faces of the oppressors and their ostentatious political orientation.
Perhaps we should take the vote away from all who are not developed.
Then raise the voting age to 21 seeing as most of these idiots have no clue about taxes, life or paying their way in the real world.
“...The night of the long knives approaches ...”
That works really well when only one sides has the knives...
Not so well when the little guy can stab back...
Bunch of “Strelnikovs”, when they were the “oppressed”, they were all for free speech....Once in power, not so much.
The Berkeley Free Speech Movement began in Fall 1964 on the U of CA campus. Mario Savio and other student activists protested UC-Berkeley’s rules prohibiting their distribution of information and collecting donations for the civil rights movement. http://abhmuseum.org/
"America's Black Holocaust Museum"
(fishtank disclosure - I'd never heard of this museum before....)
Mario Savio as he arrived on the U.C. Berkeley campus. Savio is shown speaking to another student in front of Sproul Hall. December 4, 1964. Tommy McDonough, photographer.
....so they can have abortions and smoke pot, but they can’t talk about those things?
Yes, the Free Speech movement on campusus was a big thing when all these Marxist doofuses in public life went to Berkeley and Columbia in the 60s - 70s; so now they want to ban it in case the coming generation decides to rebel against "the (liberal) Establishment" again soon. Cowards.
You meant "ostensible"?
Awesome post, btw. See my post just above.
The pleebs simply can’t handle freedom, that is why we need a ruling class to lord over us.
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