WASHINGTON- Students from Iowa State University and Ohio University filed lawsuits Tuesday against their schools to demand an end to censorship in their universities’ speech codes.
Twenty-year-old Iowa State students Erin Furleigh and Paul Gerlich filed suit in state court because their T-shirt design for their student chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws was rejected. The T-shirt used the acronym NORMAL, but placed the university’s cardinal mascot’s face as the “O.”
The students alleged that Iowa State rejected the T-shirt design under a hurried policy created to prohibit student groups from using the university’s name with “promoting dangerous, illegal or unhealthy products, actions or behaviors” and “drugs and drug paraphernalia that are illegal or unhealthful.”
“I feel smaller than these university officials….and for a long time I realized this wasn’t right,” Furleigh said at a news conference sponsored by the Stand Up For Speech Litigation Project, which is funded by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The groups will help students or teachers file suits against universities with speech codes that they believe do not comply with the First Amendment.
Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education said, the effort is intended “to change the incentive structure to one that favors freedom of speech on college campuses rather than suppression of dissent.”
Furleigh’s classmate, 20-year-old software engineer major Paul Gerlich, said he, too, was disappointed in Iowa State’s ruling on the T-shirt.
“ I pictured college where new ideas came from,” he said. “If we can’t talk about new things how will change happen?”
The free-speech project helped students at Iowa State University, Ohio University, Chicago State University and Citrus College file suits alleging unjust censorship at each of the universities.
“We want to look to challenge our universities so it will comply with the First Amendment in the constitution,” Isaac Smith, a 22-year-old senior at Ohio University, said at the news conference.
Smith took action after a T-shirt design with the phrase “We get you off for free” for his club, Students Defending Students, raised threats of disciplinary action.
“We need to be open to different view points that’s what college is for. And in our case the law is on your side,” he said.