Research Blog #7: Case

The speech rights of citizens are vital to the existence of a free world, and this includes students. A democratic system, and more importantly the ideals of democracy in a new generation of students, will fail to exist if higher education continues to push a political agenda through administrative policy regarding free speech. Today colleges and universities across the nation are using tactics such as "free speech zones." The ability that federal courts have indirectly provided administrations with in regard to their punishment of student speech has been detrimental to the practice of free speech in educational environments.The policies which foster this behavior and the lack of retaliation from staff and the academic community only enable this kind of "academic" environment to occur. Meanwhile, this ability to manipulate speech and therefore debate by administrators on a college campus greatly impacts the potential perspectives, creating bias viewpoints among students.