Aggies for Liberty uses giant beach ball to promote free speech
What do “Have faith,” “F— Trump” and “I hate Vegans” have in common?
Free speech – or, at least, the free speech ball that circulated on the Utah State University campus Wednesday. Those were all phrases written by students who took the opportunity to express their thoughts on the ball’s nine-foot expanse.
The activity was sponsored by Aggies for Liberty, a political organization that works to promote individual rights on campus and in the community.
“I think it’s important that we all have a right to our opinions and that we can share it,” said Sara Prawitt, a senior studying communicative disorders who wrote on the ball.
Other students expressed similar thoughts.
“It lets people know that this is a safe environment where everybody’s voices can be heard,” said Jessica Barber, a junior studying landscape architecture. “I think it’s good for people to feel like they can be heard.”
And some chose to directly exercise their right to speak freely – or not.
“I don’t have any comment,” said Tonya Randall, a first year graduate student who also studies landscape architecture.
The free speech ball activity was designed to raise students’ awareness of the rights guaranteed them by the First Amendment as students of a public university, said Ian Nemelka, president of Aggies for Liberty. That awareness comes in conjunction with some likely changes to USU’s student conduct code initially proposed by the organization.
Emily Orr, the club’s vice president, said some of the issues had to do with what she called “arbitrary language.” Parts of the code say that “students should” conduct themselves with civility and dignity, for example.
Orr says there are a few problems with that type of language, the first being that definitions of what is “civil” are bound to change from person to person.
“These are all things that could be different across the board,” Orr said. “So you could potentially get in trouble for saying something that’s not civil to someone else, when someone could interpret what they just said as being civil.”
The adjustments proposed by Aggies for Liberty would make it so that failing to conduct oneself “civilly” on campus is no longer a punishable offense, Orr said.
Since USU is a public university, Orr says university officials “can’t control [students’] behavior.” As such, parts of the conduct code will be changed to “behavior suggestions” instead of commands.
Nemelka said members of Aggies for Liberty were alerted to problems with the student conduct code via the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE. The organization rates higher education institutions based on their compliance with the First Amendment. Schools are given either a green, yellow or red rating. Utah State’s rating is red, meaning it belongs in the category of schools whose codes of conduct most prohibit individual rights as dictated by the U.S. Constitution.
“There haven’t been any egregious defilements of a student’s rights or civil liberties,” Nemelka said. “However, there is the potential for that to happen, and that’s why we’re working with the university.”
Amending the university’s speech guidelines could move Utah State to a yellow rating. A green rating will only be achieved if and when the school chooses to amend its sexual misconduct codes as well.
Orr said this could be a possible next step for Aggies for Liberty, but it would be a much more complicated process.
Nemelka said amending the university’s speech codes is an important first step, and hopefully the start of something more.
“Here at Utah State, I feel like we have a really good culture of a free marketplace of ideas,” Nemelka said.
He said that’s why he thinks the university has been so responsive to Aggies for Liberty’s suggestions.
“They’ve seen their mistake, and they’re working on it right now,” Nemelka said. “All we need to do is just keep up the good fight and keep holding fun events like the free speech ball.”
@alyssarbrts