Loading…
11
Everyone says the free speech zones at my old school were awful, but nobody talks about the sign rule that actually got people punished
I went to a state school in Ohio from 2016 to 2020 and I keep seeing people online say the worst thing was the tiny free speech cage they set up near the student union. That part was bad, sure, but it was so obviously dumb that everyone just ignored the rule and nothing happened. The thing that actually got kids in trouble was way smaller. You could gather anywhere on campus and say whatever you wanted, but if you held a sign, it had to be made of paper or cardboard and it could not be on a stick. No poles, no handles, nothing. My roommate got a conduct write up in spring 2018 for holding a cardboard sign taped to a paint stirrer at a protest about rising meal plan costs. Five people were there. Five. She had to sit through a two hour meeting about fire code and 'weaponizable objects.' Meanwhile a guy in a gorilla suit yelling through a megaphone on the main lawn for a whole afternoon got zero attention. The policy did not stop speech, it stopped speech that was easy to follow around campus and photograph. A sign on a stick gets seen from 100 feet away. A sign in your hands at chest height gets seen from 10. Anyone else notice their school had some tiny boring rule that did more damage than the big scary one everyone complains about?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
mason_lee7d ago
Remember the "no chalk" rule that got my buddy busted?
8