UNFREE ASSEMBLY: Administrators at Kent State University refused to recognize a campus organization, the 2nd Amendment Club, as an official student group. Conservative Kent State students organized the group with the assistance of the Leadership Institute's Campus Leadership Program (CLP). Officials at Kent State's Office of Campus Life refused to consider the 2nd Amendment Club's application for recognition, said student Luke Adams, who founded the club in fall 2004. "We asked Kent State to recognize our 2nd Amendment group, and they treated us like second-class citizens," said Adams.
The club was to educate students about responsible and safe gun use through education and events such as trips to shooting ranges. "By banning the 2nd Amendment Club, Kent State limited their students' 1st Amendment rights to free speech and free assembly," said Jim Eltringham, director of public relations for the Campus Leadership Program. Kent State recognizes several liberal groups, including the Kent State Anti-War Coalition, Students Eliminating Environmental Destruction, and the Coalition for a Humane and New Global Economy. "Conservatives apparently don't get to form issue groups at Kent State," said Eltringham. The Leadership Institute's Campus Leadership Program works with more than 400 independent conservative groups on campuses in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
COLLEGE BANS THE PASSION: Florida's Indian River Community College (IRCC) is engaging in a campaign of repression against a Christian student group for attempting to show Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ on campus. In November 2004, the college banned the Christian Student Fellowship (CSF) from showing the film because it was R-rated, despite the fact that the college has hosted a live performance titled "F**king for Jesus" that describes simulated sex with "the risen Christ."
CSF students report that after their group wrote President Edwin R. Massey in protest, administrators pulled group leaders out of class and, astoundingly, demanded an apology from them for their actions. Now, CSF is even unable to officially meet because its adviser resigned after IRCC imposed a burdensome new policy requiring that faculty advisers attend all student group meetings. "IRCC's assault on CSF must end immediately," declared David French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which wrote to IRCC on behalf of CSF. CSF's trouble began November 15, when IRCC administrators first rejected fliers advertising the club's screening of The Passion of the Christ and then cancelled the event altogether. CSF reported that one administrator, Lori LaCivita, stated that the reason for these actions was that the film was R-rated. Students also told FIRE that in early December, after CSF wrote Dean of Student Affairs Johnny Moore and President Massey in an effort to restore its rights, CSF President Preslin Isaac and Vice President Sydney Franklin were pulled out of class by LaCivita and other administrators, who demanded that the students write letters of apology to Dean Moore and President Massey for having addressed the college's "higher authority" without their permission.
When appealing to the IRCC administration proved fruitless, CSF contacted FIRE for assistance. On December 16, FIRE wrote IRCC to explain that its actions against CSF were unconstitutional and violated its own policies, which emphasize that at IRCC "students are treated as mature adults." FIRE also protested IRCC's remarkably intrusive and reprehensible requirement that government representatives, in the form of faculty advisers, be present at all student organization meetings.
