A Federal Judget issued a restraining order yesterday allowing students at Tarrant County College in Texas to protest outside of the school’s designated “Free Speech Zone.” The students are suing TCC alleging the “Free Speech Zone” is an unconstitutional restriction on their speech.
Two students at the college planned to wear empty holsters to advocate for the right to carry concealed weapons on campus. Campus administrators told them that they could only wear the holsters in a designated “free speech zone.” This is the third time students at TCC have been denied permission to hold the event across campus. Lawyers with the ACLU are representing the students, challenging the constitutionality of TCC’s “Free Speech Zone.”
Students in Texas have been fighting unconstitutional speech zones on their campuses for almost a decade now. Just last month the University of Northern Texas eliminated its “speech zones” after years of student organizing. In 2004 a federal judge ruled a much larger speech zone at Texas Tech unconstitutional.
But despite these victories far to many colleges and universities still restrict campus speech to a handful of small, out of the way areas on campus. Over the past week higher education news outlets have been awash with the story of four faculty members at Southwestern College in California who were suspended for stepping out of a “Free Speech Area” during a protest.
While students and faculty have made significant progress in opening their campuses for free expression, incidents like this remind us that there is still much work to be done.