Chancellor Sullivan [email protected]:
In 2004, you carelessly told a member of the UNC Board of Governors to help you “get Mike Adams off your back” following a decision to hire (for $3000) a porn star to speak at UNC-Greensboro the night before I spoke at your university without compensation for hotel and mileage expenses. I say “carelessly,” because you were unaware that the Board member was (and is) a supporter of mine.
At that time, your school was under the impression — or, perhaps, pretending to be under the impression — that it could deny funding for speakers when the sponsoring group was “political” in nature. Since then, it appears that UNCG has attained some degree of constitutional literacy by familiarizing itself with a seminal Supreme Court case (Southworth) from 2000, which clearly does not give the university that option but, instead, requires “viewpoint neutrality” in the distribution of mandatory student activity fees.
This is an old trick that administrators often use when the College Republicans (CRs) are the only “political” group on campus.
But, today, I want to pause to thank the administration for funding two of my later speeches at UNCG — in April of 2004 and, again, in April of 2005. I used the money to buy firearms on both occasions. After I finish this editorial, I will forward pictures of some of the animals I killed for your viewing pleasure. Please reply with appropriate contact information for your campus PETA chapter. I don’t want them to be left out of the fun. I strive to be inclusive and non-discriminatory.
Of course, the real purpose I write today is not to talk about the Second Amendment. As usual, I want to talk about the First Amendment. And, this time, I write in support of the Libertarians, not the CRs.
Your recent decision to discipline two Libertarian students for peacefully protesting outside of your university’s two tiny (and unconstitutional) “free speech zones” is a national disgrace. UNCG is acting like the University of Moscow in the 20th century. It is not acting like an American university should be acting in the 21st century. This is not freedom, this is fascism.
It is a bitter irony that the students you wrongfully disciplined were actually protesting the existence of your patently illegal “speech zones” at the time they were given a citation for “Violation of Respect.” I have copied the citation below for all of the free world to see:
UNCG administrators are not deserving of respect as long as they behave like administrators in a concentration camp. It is difficult to fathom the perversity of logic that dubs the expression of free speech an act of “disrespect” and obedience to tyrants “respect.”
This “speech zone” policy might not bring as much embarrassment to UNCG as the time it hired (knowingly) a convicted pedophile to organize student activities in the Office of Student Life. But I hope it does.
I had a long telephone conversation with a member of the United States House of Representatives after my first encounter with UNCG’s hostility towards the First Amendment. He called my office to suggest that intervention by the Department of Education was needed to cure hostility towards free speech in the UNC system. Today, I am in complete agreement.
Later this week, I will be speaking with that Congressman again. Between now and then, I suggest that you reverse your position. And I eagerly await my citation for “violation of respect.”
To be continued … (and for more details, log on to www.thefire.org ).
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