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Regardless of how the phrase and the autonomy of the First Amendment is challenged, religion and the need to maintain separation of church and state has been a great contest of the United States legal systems. The court system typically will remove itself from decisions within the higher education institution and leave such decisions to the administrators themselves to make the best decision for the organization, unless those topics in question legitimately violate a federal statute or clause related to the Constitution directly (McFarlane, 2012). Therefore, we will examine the application of the First Amendment within higher education.

“Free speech” often has negative connotations because the negative outcomes are publicized more than the positive outcomes. ‘Free Speech’ is a time for individuals to express their beliefs and topic on an important issue. People chose to present themselves in a vast majority of ways such as, holding signs, making t-shirts, shouting, etc. People who chose to present themselves in disrupting ways such as, foul language, inappropriate attire are more likely to be noticed than another student that is holding a simple and respectful sign. Schmidt states, “Universities cannot censor or suppress speech, no matter how obnoxious in content, without violating their justification of existence” (2). There is no definition of what type of ‘free speech’ should be censored and not allowed. With that said, there should not be a limit on ‘free speech’

The University decide who can write what where does negatively impact the first amendment right of students. However, I also believe that the way they showed their support for Trump can be found as offensive to some. In this case, more political correctness may have limited the negative light shined on this situation.

Universities that have been trying to quash free speech have encountered some court reversals of their attempts. But campus leftists have not given up. The newest university gambit to limit speech mirrors the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines concerning sexual harassment in the workplace, (creating a hostile environment) or they attempt to base their speech code on the "fighting words" doctrine enunciated by the Court in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire

In the essay Protecting freedom of expression the campus, by Derek Bok, his thesis is to to abide by the first amendment and try ignore or persuade the people to do the right thing. Throughout this essay there were various argument to support his thesis. The first argument was that the First Amendment does not make what the person says right, proper, or civil. Bok comments on how even though people find the flags to be offensive it is not enough to make prohibiting it right. Towards the end of his essay another argument he states is that the First Amendment does not specifically comment on what is a private institution, but it would seem unpractical to have a college have less freedom of speech.

For example at the University of Delaware, there was a case in which a student, Maciej Murakowski, was publishing graphic essays on a personal website and caused other students from the campus to feel frightened and threatened. This student posted essays about kidnap, rape, and murder. His essays were also rather racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic. The university decided to suspend his activities in school and permission into the library, but when he failed to comply with these conditions, the campus decided to suspend him permanently. The article, “Balancing Students’ Rights” states, “On Aug. 1, 2007, Murakowski filed a civil rights suit in federal court, claiming the university violated his freedom of expression under the First Amendment and procedural due process under the Fourteenth Amendment” (76). Murakowski not only challenged the university, but also interfered with the rights of both the university and all of the people that felt uncomfortable by him because of his writing. While he was “protecting” his rights as a citizen, he was taking away the rights of others. The federal court then decided that in no way were his essays threatening, but instead he was simply expressing a form of writing style. Murakowski was given more authority than to those that accused

Colleges and universities have found numerous ways throughout the years to protect their students from the outside world. One measure that colleges have taken to ensure this is that they have stopped continuing to allow comedians and speakers present at their schools due to upset students. These students did not care for the jokes that were being made by the speakers. Another measure taken by colleges is that minority students can eliminate anything they do not want to think about, read about, or be challenged

Third, any campus that does not allow students and faculty to protect themselves, violates their constitutional right to do so and leaves their institution open to litigation in the event that a crime is committed against a student or faculty member while on campus.

No matter what people do, everybody will have their own opinions on things and will have their ways of how they want to communicate it to other people. The different communications involve politics, problems, religion, talking over the phone, etc. In You’ve Been Warned: Speech Under Fire, it says, “A majority of college students believe universities should restrict which kinds of expression are allowed on campuses”(Robby Soave). There is a lot of talk that happens on college campus’ that offend people and even students believe that we should be limited on the things that they say. Another issue that has occurred with college campus freedom of speech is said by Catherine Rampell when a college professor was speaking of her opinions politically and a student had recorded her in the classroom. That student had posted it on the internet where it had gone viral and even got onto Fox News where they referred to the words she told the students to be an assault. This professor received threats and riots to get her fired which required her to flee her state for safety. When she was teaching her class and claiming her opinions it was obvious that she was a liberal so according to the Knight Foundation Survey, it claims that, “colleges should be able to restrict campus speech that expresses ‘political views that are upsetting or

(KOAT.com). No university likes to hear bad feedback from the public especially about themselves and this information worried some people, the world as a whole. While some students at UNM refused to believe, Lauren Keller for example stated to KOAT news, “Honestly I don't think so. I walk around UNM by myself, I know I shouldn't but I never feel in danger at all,” (KOAT.com) But at risk or not UNM decided to do something about the students’ safety.

One of the most landmark cases on free speech was Schenck v. United States in 1919 where Charles Schenck mailed letters to draftees of World War 1 stating that the draft was wrong and to “not submit to intimidation”. The court concluded that Schenck was not protected under the 1st amendment in this situation because it was an attempt interfere with the draft which is a criminal offense. More specifically, there has been many cases involving college speech in the 1st amendment. There has been times where college speech has been restricted through history and times where it has been encouraged. College is a place where student speech should be open but also respected. There are many famous court cases involving fan profanity, student clubs, the newspaper, on college campuses. One of the first college speech cases was Sweezy v New Hampshire where the court had to decide if the Attorney General of New Hampshire could prosecute an individual who refused to answer questions about a lecture he gave on a college campus. The court ruled in favor of Sweezy. College speech became an issue ever since that

There are two questions that this court must answer today; First, does Keller’s speech have First Amendment protections? Second, does the University of California, Delphi have the ability to restrict such speech? Keller argues that the university violated his First Amendment rights by attempting to restrict his expression of disfavored views. The university contends that Keller’s actions were disruptive to the learning environment, and thus suspended; not violating his rights to free speech.

While the First Amendment does protect the right to freedom of speech, university officials have some authority in defining the limitations of freedom of speech and press on a campus setting. However, this mostly applies to private colleges, as students enrolled in public universities often receive protection under the First

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion regarding free speech on college campuses. Our first amendment gives us the right of Free Speech but many groups retain the ability to censor it within their own organisation, such as in the workplace and in both public and private lower education. I believe that the ability should be extended to colleges and universities (both public and private). Students should have the right to be at school while feeling physically safe. An example of this right being violated because of someone else’s “free speech” was last spring at American University in which bananas were strung up on nooses around campus with AKA (a historically-black sorority) labeled on them the day after AU’s first black female student

As some colleges are consider placing speech codes and regulations on campus because of allegations concerning racist speech and harassment. There are some, such as, Cinnamon Stillwell and Charles R. Lawrence III, who are in favor of speech codes because they consider some of the actions a form of harassment. While others, such as, Harvey B. Silverglate, Greg Lukianoff, and Howard M. Wasserman opposes the codes and regulations because they insist that no matter how profane the speech, it is still protected under The First Amendment. Although there are legitimate concerns for implementing speech codes, these codes should not be placed on their student’s speech because they not only violate The First Amendment, but also promote the administrative abuse of power, along with causing students to self-censor their speech, while teaching them to hide and or suppress their unpopular beliefs.