Two universities this week put a halt to policies governing students’ speech after being sued by students allied with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, known as FIRE.
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Two universities this week put a halt to policies governing students’ speech after being sued by students allied with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, known as FIRE.
Dixie State University’s president, Richard B. Williams, wrote in an email to the campus on Monday that students would no longer need to get administrative approval to post fliers or hold events, The Salt Lake Tribune reports. In March, three students sued the university after being told they couldn’t post satirical images of George W. Bush and Che Guevara.
Meanwhile, California State Polytechnic University at Pomona has suspended a policy prohibiting students from distributing fliers, for example, in campus parking lots, and listing preferred free-speech areas. A student sued the university in March after administrators told him he could hand out animal-rights fliers only in a designated area. A university spokeswoman, Esther Tanaka, told the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin that the college had suspended the policy while it negotiated the lawsuit.
According to a statement from FIRE, both colleges are in the midst of settlement talks.
Clarification (5/8/2015, 6:49 p.m.): A previous version of this post implied that California State Polytechnic University at Pomona had a formal policy limiting free speech to a single area on its campus. In fact, the policy listed places expression may not occur. The post has been updated to reflect that.
