College Campus Battleground Over Free Speech

College campuses were once a place for the free exchange of ideas and the center for vigorous intellectual debate, but increasingly this is no longer true as liberal intellectuals have tightened their hold on schools across the country. 

Increasingly, conservative viewpoints, as well as any that don't align with the left's agenda, are shutout or outright banned under the guise of creating safe zones free from "offensive" viewpoints.

Pro-life students on the UC Davis campus recently sat at a table and asked passing students their opinion with a simple question, "Should abortion be legal?" The opinions provided were "yes", "no" and "it depends". 

In this entirely inoffensive act of outreach, the students attempted to connect with their fellow students without any of the usual passion which can charge abortion debates. 

What was the response of abortion-supporting students? To form a protest with signs warning approaching students of "graphic images ahead" and offering use of umbrellas to safely escort them past.

When other students caught on to the fact that there were no offensive images, the abortion group responded by forming a line in front of the table and shouting angry vitriol. The tactic? 

Drown out rationale debate with loud, offensive language. The conservative students petitioned the university to protect their right to free speech but the university decided to do nothing.

Worse still is when a university uses policy to enforce censorship. In Brandon University, the University Student Union has decided that since the pro-abortion group Brandon University Women's Collective already addresses the issue of abortion, there is no need for any other group to do so. 

For this reason, they canceled the official club status of the Brandon University Students for Life Club and banned it from campus. 

The university claims that pro-life groups makes some students feel uncomfortable.

It assumes that the comfort of students takes precedence over healthy debate and intellectual freedom. 

The university has offered to restore the club's status if its members will only "change their views" to those that are approved by the student union. 

The Student Union has generously even offered to help reeducate them on the pro-abortion position if they embrace the killing of unborn babies.

On other campuses, the administration actively blocks students from taking classes taught by conservative professors, such as lecturer Keith Fink. 

His popular class  "Communication Studies 167: Sex, Politics, and Race: Free Speech on Campus" used to fill up to the maximum size designated by the university, but he was able to freely admit other students with a common university waiver system for individual class registration. 

Now, these permissions are being denied by the administration. A lecture hall that can accommodate 292 students is now holding a class of 200 and the 41 additional students who attempted to register were all blocked from enrolling.

As if such broad and bureaucratic policies of censorship were not enough, universities have begun forming "bias response teams" like the one at Appalachian State University and Ohio State University. 

One study recently found 230 such groups that encourage students to report any speech that they deem offensive, no matter if it is protected by the First Amendment or not. 

At the University of California San Diego, a university newspaper satirizing "safe spaces" is now being sued by a university legal team for offending those who need to use safe spaces, free of ideas that don't fit their views.

Such "response teams" acting in an official capacity on university campuses have encouraged a climate of fear as they encourage students to report one another. 

Opposing views are censored and a sort of "group-think" reminiscent of totalitarian states is enforced. 

Step outside that "safe" little box of liberal ideology and you may be labeled too offensive or disruptive for the university.