Hello my friends, I refer you to Nicole Neily, in the article below. She is calling out the *Chilling* of free speech on college campuses. And this super brave Open Space warrior is suing their ASS! Chilling refers to regulations that do not ban speech but are too broad or vague causing people to self censor for fear of violating the law. For example while student handbooks may say that unwelcome or offensive speech is prohibited, students don't know what qualifies until they have been reported to the college secret speech police. Nicole puts the issues into two categories, the seen and the unseen. She says the fact that students are just not talking about so many issues on campus is because they are scared. Nicole said she learned about these policies that create bias response teams and this horrifies her ... she says this is ripped from East Germany were students are encouraged to report on each other. Schools have portals on a website where you can anonymously report on your fellow classmates speech. You can do so anonymously and make false reports. The besmirched accused party may ultimately be deemed not guilty by a University panel but by then they've already been dragged through a whole muddy disciplinary hearing process... this also sends a message as we see in modern day divisive American politics to other students that if you voice an opinion that others dislike you will suffer serious similar consequences of being punished for your speech. She says frankly the kinds of issues that get reported are political issues and religious issues and those are the very issues that we as a society, that students need to be debating not shutting people up not scaring people into silence. This is a very dangerous path she said. Here is a newspaper editorial on the subject, I hope you agree, a fascinating subject to all of us who believe in the open space model of free speech. Cheers from Colorado, MC
https://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-fighting-for-free-speech/article_f8fd3c3c-e335-545c-9f67-708c22d20c6c.html
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