FALL 2006 NEWSLETTER
GEORGIA FOI ACCESS
GEORGIA FIRST AMENDMENT FOUNDATION

For now a federal ruling changing the speech code at Georgia Tech "doesn’t have implications" for 33 other campuses, says a Board of Regents spokeswoman

Tech students were ‘less free to speak and express themselves at the Institute than they were in downtown Atlanta’

Republicans move to free up campus crime records and speech in 2006

 By Tom Bennett

Decatur, Ga., Aug. 25, 2006 – The punishing codes gagging student speech on campus are so anomalous in modern Democratic life and so obscure that although a federal judge ordered deep changes in Georgia Tech’s 10 days ago, the Board of Regents still doesn’t know enough about such codes to say whether the Tech ruling will spread to 33 other schools.

"Originally, the Legal Affairs office told me they had not yet had a briefing from the (Georgia) Attorney General’s office to be able to discern if there are going to be any far-reaching implications," Arlethia Perry-Johnson, spokeswoman for the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, said today.

"Subsequently, they told me that at this time they don’t believe they are going to receive any information that would infer implications beyond Georgia Tech. Part of that is based on the fact that the Legal Office doesn’t know what the codes are on the other campuses in order to determine, for example, if there are any similarities among them. In addition, they have not yet spoken with the consulting attorney who represents Georgia Tech, so there will be further study and analysis."

There are 35 University System of Georgia campuses. At least one, a center of learning of some import, long ago turned its back on speech control. The University Council of the University of Georgia voted unanimously in March 1994 rejecting any speech code on the Athens campus, according to an edition that year of this newsletter, Georgia FOI Access.

Well, it’s fair to say that Georgia Tech doesn’t like to play second fiddle to UGA in anything. However, that’s exactly what has happened in this instance.  Judge Owen Forrester of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled Aug. 15 in Sklar v. Clough. He ordered Georgia Tech "to abide by an agreement and change the code," according to Andrea Jones’ article the next day in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Georgia Tech (in an agreement) had taken out wording prohibiting students from any attempt to "injure, harm or malign" a person because of "race, religious belief, color, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or gender," Jones wrote.  As a result of this ruling, Georgia Tech’s speech policy is under judicial supervision. This means the school has to go to Forrester to change the code  anytime in the next five years, Jones wrote.

It is an important step in Georgia First Amendment freedoms, and it began in a lively brief filed in Atlanta on March 14, 2006. Orit Sklar and Ruth Malhotra are Georgia Tech students who belong to the College Republicans at Georgia Tech. Sklar is a junior, Malhorta a senior and chairman of the student Republican group. They sued Tech’s G. Wayne Clough, president; Gail DiSabatino, dean of students; Danielle McDonald, dean of student involvement; Stephanie Ray, director of diversity programs; and Michael D. Black, director of housing.

The student’s lawyers are David A. Cortman of Lawrenceville, David A. French of Columbia, Tenn., and Benjamin W. Bull and David J. Hacker of the Alliance Defense Fund of Scottsdale, Ariz. That group’s main interests, as you can see on its web site, are religious freedom, sanctity of human life and family values. It describes there how it created a Center for Academic Freedom last year. This step was taken "to combat the violation of the constitutional free speech and religious liberty rights of Christian students on public university campuses."

You certainly would not expect persons wanting more vigorous speech to shy away from it in a lawsuit, and they did not.  "Georgia Institute of Technology claims to be one of the nation’s preeminent public research universities," the suit begins. "Yet when students matriculate the Institute, they enter an environment that, by policy and practice, squelches their most cherished First Amendment freedoms. The Institute threatens punishment ranging from sanction to expulsion for any student or student organization that engages in ‘intolerant’ speech, expression and behavior. Indeed, students are less free to speak and express themselves at the Institute than they are in downtown Atlanta."

CLAUDE SITTON of Oxford, Ga., is a retired New York Times civil-rights correspondent in the South and also the retired Pulitzer prize-winning editor of the News & Observer, Raleigh. In 1995, he quit after four years as an adjunct professor at Emory University to protest the school’s speech code. (Emory is a private, and not a Board of Regents, campus.)

Sitton was asked what he thought of Judge Forrester’s ruling against Georgia Tech.  "Well, based on what I know about speech codes, he was right," Sitton said.  "I think any speech code on campus defeats the whole purpose of education."

A POLITICAL TIDE is turning in Georgia as Republicans are coming off the sideline to get involved in First Amendment issues. Four Republican members of the Georgia House from Gwinnett County co-sponsored the 2006 legislation that addressed street-gang crime and as a last-minute addition, made an open record of crime logs at Mercer and other private campuses. Now two Georgia Tech students and their lawyers are leading in bringing about more free speech on at least one public campus. This could move to the other campuses -- if activists and Media Bar members will just get busy and drive it home.

When Lorraine Bennett’s article about speech codes was published in Georgia FOI Access 11 years ago, there were 235 U.S. public colleges and universities enforcing speech codes, according to a Freedom Forum survey.  Claude Sitton was a primary source for that article. He said speech codes "coerce and intimidate to censor, to stifle, to gag anyone who might say anything considered offensive by some group singled out for special treatment."  It takes patience to want to strengthen and keep alive the First Amendment.

A decade later, change is beginning to take root. As a result of Judge Forrester’s ruling, "Tech students now won’t have to enter a zone of censorship when they walk on campus," lawyer David A. French told reporter Andrea Jones. "They now have the same rights as every Georgian."

Tom Bennett writes about FOI issues for Georgia FOI Access.