Posted on 03/17/2003 2:30:14 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
When it comes to the location of free speech activities on the University of Houston campus, some critics believe there is an unspoken rule: political correctness.
Last year, UH officials went to court to try to stop a student anti-abortion group from demonstrating on a main plaza near the library, claiming the university had always relegated speech activities to designated free speech zones that did not include the plaza.
But Thursday, university officials allowed students to hold a gay rights rally in an area that is not a free speech zone.
That's because administrators determined that the rally, which drew about 120 spectators, was a "university sponsored" event, such as cheerleading or band practice. Two of the featured speakers were Councilwoman Annise Parker and Mitchell Katine, a Houston attorney who will argue against Texas' anti-sodomy law before the U.S. Supreme Court this year.
The rally generated 1,300 letters that will be forwarded to state legislators today, opposing bills that would ban gay or lesbian couples from adopting children or becoming foster parents.
"I think this is a classic example of political correctness run amok," said Benjamin Bull, a lawyer who represented the UH student organization that fought the university over the anti-abortion rally. "The university is almost Stalinistic in permitting government-favored speech, while banning government disfavored and politically incorrect speech."
UH spokesman Eric Gerber said the difference between the two rallies is that the gay rights demonstration was a "university sponsored" event, while the anti-abortion display was only sponsored by a student group.
He declined to comment on Bull's contention that university administrators are much more likely to support "politically correct" causes such as homosexual or abortion rights.
Marki McMillan, a graduate student in UH's College of Social Work who helped organize Thursday's rally, said she and her colleagues initially sought permission to hold the event in a designated free speech zone near the university's student center.
The university has four free speech zones designed to control "potentially disruptive" speech. But because of construction near the student center, the group decided it would be better to hold the rally outside the College of Social Work. McMillan said the dean of the college, Ira Colby, "was able to call" administrators to get the event classified as university sponsored activity.
This eliminated the need to hold the rally in a free speech zone, because, according to university guidelines, the free speech policy "does not apply to official University activities."
Colby did not return several calls from the Chronicle. "We had an excellent turnout, the speakers were all incredible," McMillan said.
"One of the points of the event was to generate a lot of letters (against the proposed bills)," McMillan said. "We counted 1,300 letters, which are going to be delivered to legislators (today), which is Gay and Lesbian Lobbying Day."
McMillan said she and four other students who coordinated the rally received class credit in a required course called, "Community Planning and Action."
Experts have said that free speech zones were created in the 1960s and proliferated in the 1980s to try to control potentially disruptive speech in the wake of massive student activism.
Bull, a lawyer with the conservative Christian nonprofit group Alliance Defense Fund in Scottsdale, Ariz., has called UH's free speech policy one of the most restrictive in the country.
In June 2002, U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr. in Houston ruled that UH had to permit the student group Pro-Life Cougars to erect in the fall of 2002 a controversial anti-abortion display in the heavily trafficked Butler Plaza, near UH's Hoffman Hall and M.D. Anderson Library. The display, which includes large pictures of dead fetuses, went up in September.
The area is not a designated free speech zone, but UH had allowed a similar anti-abortion display to go up in the plaza in March 2002.
Werlein ruled the area had historically been used as a "public forum" for student expression, something UH officials have denied.
In a preliminary ruling, the judge decided that UH's then-existing speech policy was unconstitutional because it gave the dean of students, William F. Munson, "unfettered discretion" in determining what events were potentially disruptive and thus had to be relegated to free speech zones.
On Wednesday, Werlein made a final ruling declaring that policy unconstitutional, which would allow Bull and his colleagues to seek attorneys' fees from UH. Gerber said he could not comment on Werlein's most recent decision because the university is still appealing his earlier ruling.
UH officials have maintained they have addressed Werlein's concerns by implementing a new policy in August 2002 that provides stricter guidelines on what is potentially disruptive and by allowing for an appeals process.
Pro-Life Cougars have also challenged the new policy in Werlein's court.
In his recent decision, Werlein hinted that second policy is even more restrictive than the first because, under the new policy, "all faculty, staff, students and student organizations" are required to seek permission 10 days in advance to hold an event in a free speech zone. But the judge has yet to rule on the second policy.
His specialties are political theory and American politics, and his classes are popular. He has been nominated as "Outstanding Teacher of the Year" each year since he arrived. That doesn't carry much water with Howard Katz, who was 10 when he and his parents fled to the United States from Nazi Germany in 1936. Katz says he joined the Army as soon as he turned 17. He went to the Pacific but didn't see combat.
Katz, a former faculty member at the college, is among Smith's most outspoken critics. "I lost both sets of grandparents in the Holocaust," he said. "I'm a strong defender of free speech and of academic freedom. David Smith has a right to stand on any corner and say anything he wants. "But in a classroom, teachers are held to a higher standard by the principles of academic freedom."
What does being a Marxist mean to Smith? "In a nutshell, it means I have a fundamental disagreement with capitalism," he said. "I think that capitalism is a system based on exploitation and oppression and domination and racism and war and lots of other things. "So I'm totally opposed to capitalism, and I think that the majority of the people of this country ought to get together and transform the system," he said. "I think we need to replace capitalism with some kind of democratic socialism."
Smith's personal political beliefs didn't draw substantial public criticism until a guest column he had written appeared in the Galveston County Daily News on Sept. 20, when emotions were still running high after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In the column, he argued that dropping atomic bombs on Japan was not necessary to end World War II. At least two other columns were written by others debating the issue, and many residents sent letters to the editor as the dispute heated up. ***
That article is by Molly Beth Malcolm, lord high panjandrum of the Texas Democratic Party. And she doesn't pretend to be balanced -- like Rush would say, she is the imbalance!!
Of course, don't ever look for the full story in the Crunchicle ...... as notice that a formal editorial blasted a GOP member of the Legislature for introducing a bill to reverse the cabalistic introduction of gay adoptions at Texas Family Services. A young woman who objected to the cabal's changing state policy against the law's mandate, got fired. And Governor Bush a) didn't do anything about it, and b) went off and had a few private meetings with the Log Cabins, before c) appointing a Log Cabin to a heavy post on the president's AIDS advisory panel.
Note to Texas Freepers: the Bush family are not conservatives!!
I Freeped David Smith's tenure hearing with e-mails to anyone on faculty who was in a position to decide on his tenure, and by sending alerts to conservatives I know in Texas, asking them to Freep College of the Mainland on that subject also. But the tenure grant was prewired, and the hearing a put-up job.
Perhaps not as conservative as many FReepers but most Americans aren't. Policy had been driven deep into LIBERAL territory. Now I see Bush moving the agenda in the right direction.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.