Shippensburg University was required last week to change portions of its Student Conduct Code, as well as its Racism and Cultural Diversity Policy, after a judge ruled them unconstitutional.
The situation began shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when the state university -- located in Southern Pennsylvania -- asked students who had hung anti-Osama bin Laden posters to remove them so as not to provoke reaction from opposing students.
The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving civil liberties on college campuses, initially filed the lawsuit against Shippensburg. The group said that students' right to free speech was violated during the incident.
Initially, Shippensburg President Anthony Ceddia publicly dismissed the allegations as "frivolous and without merit."
Last September, District Court Judge John Jones granted a preliminary injunction against the school, barring sections of the code from enforcement.
After Jones reaffirmed his ruling last week, Shippensburg agreed to change its policies.
In a recent statement, Ceddia said that the changes resulting from the lawsuit "reflect our continuing commitment to the idea that a university is a marketplace of ideas based on an individual's right to free speech."
"Shippensburg asked that the school's principles be mirrored in students' attitudes and behaviors," said David French, an attorney who handled the lawsuit for FIRE.
The old Student Conduct Code banned speech that could potentially "provoke, harass, intimidate and harm others."
According to French, these provisions are too broad and ambiguous.
The code "made my ability to express my ideas dependent on your receptivity to those ideas. That is unconstitutional. What exactly does it mean to provoke someone, for instance?"
Since Shippensburg is a public university, it is bound by the free speech protections in the Constitution.
The FIRE organization believes, however, that speech codes should be abandoned across the country, at public and private universities alike.
"Decent and important private universities should be embarrassed and ashamed to offer their students fewer rights than community college students receive," said Alan Kors, a Penn History professor and the chairman of FIRE's Board of Directors.
According to Penn's Student Code of Conduct, hate and other inflammatory speech is "condemned" by the University, but "student speech or expression is not by itself a basis for disciplinary action."
Disciplinary action, the code states, is subject to whether students violate applicable laws or University regulations and policies.
"I wish it would just say, 'if they were breaking state or federal laws,'" Kors said.
"The problem with University regulations is that they are all over the place."
According to French, the so-called "speech regulations" many colleges and universities created during the 1980s have been changed in name and "couched as trying to prevent sexual or racial harassment."
Harassment "must be sufficiently serious as to limit or deny students' ability to participate in or benefit from an academic program," said Gerald Reynolds, assistant secretary to the Office of Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Education, in a letter to FIRE last August.
