Yet Another Attack On Free Speech By "Tolerant" Liberal College Administrators

One of my major pet peeves is the advent of so-called "speech codes" that have sprung up all across America on the campus' of our nation's so-called institutions of "higher learning." As I have previously noted here at the Notepad, I myself was victimized by this hideous assault on freedom of speech when I was attending college nearly twenty years ago. Of course, I made no bones about my plan to deal with it directly, and the administrator who first thought I was going to cower into a corner and whimper like a baby, was caught completely off guard by my firm, yet polite response.

In the years since, this lunacy has grown far worse, to the point where many of our nation's college and university students have found themselves dragged before some form of disciplinary panel or other to receive punishment for their alleged transgression, or worse yet, expelled from the institution they were attending, simply due to the fact that something they said or penned merely offended someone.

Thankfully, several organizations have sprung up over the years to deal with the rise in speech fascism carried out by the spineless, and most often, liberal hypocrites who claim to support the idea of free expression-sure they do, right up until that expression rubs up against their decidedly left-of-center views, then the witch hunt begins in earnest.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (F.I.R.E) is one of the organizations that stands up for the 1st Amendment rights of college and university students all across America. A recent California case that required their involvement caught my attention.

Tim Wilde was once a student at UCLA's Graduate School of Education, but was drummed out of the program for reasons he felt were due to his ideological views. As such, Mr. Wilde set up a web site that was critical of the University. This did not sit well with the powers-that-be at UCLA, who sent a letter to Mr. Wilde, demanding that he take down the site, using the rather flimsy assertion that his site constituted "trademark infringement and dilution" due to its use of "ucla" in the domain name, and went on to infer that Mr. Wilde might be committing a "criminal offense" under California law.

F.I.R.E. promptly sent a letter to the gowned gaggle at UCLA, pretty much calling BS on their assertions, and then went public with the story. Within hours of that, the school backed down.

You can read the whole story here.

Glad to see that, once again, a student, albeit a former one, was able to assert their freedom of speech/expression as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.

I just think it sad that organizations such as F.I.R.E are even necessary in a supposedly free country.