I love a good laugh, and U.Va. Today certainly does too. Earlier this week, the outlet published an article describing a survey which crowned the University as the number one school for free speech. This is a shocking achievement for the University to receive after such a divisive end to last semester. However, moving past initial surprise, this article displays a new reputation of which the University seeks to convince its student body — namely, that it is a bastion of free speech. Every university legally reserves the right to set its own regulations on the time, place and manner of student speech. Yet, if the University brazenly seeks to tout the strength of free speech on Grounds, they need to engage with students who have felt othered and antagonized by these same regulations. In short, by announcing this award without addressing its failures to uphold free speech, the University consciously sidesteps the myriad conflicts between itself and the free expression of students on Grounds.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is a nonprofit which claims to protect student discourse on college campuses. In this vein, they publish an annual report which ranks universities on a set of factors. Through equal assessment of both extremely quantitative and nebulously qualitative factors, this survey yielded the University’s ranking. These factors include tolerance for speakers, administrative support of student free speech, disruptive conduct, “viewpoint ratio” between liberals and conservatives on Grounds and of course, the highly specific value of “openness.” FIRE surveys a variety of students from each university around the country, quizzes them on this range of ill-defined factors and expects a quantifiable result to come out of it. To say that this methodology is suspect is an understatement. Looking at two major examples of free speech on Grounds, it becomes clear that the survey’s ability to properly quantify free speech is deeply imprecise.
At the current moment, it is hard to separate any universities’ ranking on free speech from the pro-Palestine encampments that characterized the end of spring semester. At the University, Virginia State Police in riot gear forcibly cleared the encampment May 4. Students were pepper sprayed and arrested. In short, the administration undoubtedly responded in a way which did not encourage the survey’s factors of “administration support” of their beliefs or “openness” to their demands for divestment. This semester, causing much controversy, the University further limited various actions which have recently been used in expressive activities, such as mask-wearing and the use of tents. Surely, an event like this should disqualify the University from gracing the higher end of freedom of speech rankings, or at the very least shame the University into not touting the claim so visibly. So, how did the University win out above others?
Analyzing other contenders, it is interesting to note that the University has one of the worst scores for disruptive conduct in the top 20. From Columbia University, number 250 on the list, to the University of Southern California, number 245, students created campus encampments which were forcibly cleared in manners similar to the University. Even more confusingly, universities that ended encampments on relatively peaceful terms like Brown University and the University of Michigan ranked similarly in disruptive conduct to the University and significantly lower overall — number 229 and number 186 respectively. The fact that U.Va. Today is taking this statistic and running with it, rather than asking serious questions about methodology and deservedness demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of free speech and students’ relationship to it on Grounds.
Take another free speech factor — the University’s rating of administration support is significantly low compared to the next top four best schools. And the lack of administration support for free speech has manifested quite recently. On Aug. 28, the University Guide Service announced that they had been suspended by the University. Specifically, the University cited their failure to fulfill expectations of reliability and tour quality. According to national news outlets, however, the real issue is the Guides’ unapologetic retelling of the University’s complicated history. The University’s own lack of transparency lends credence to this theory. Limiting the Guides’ ability to tour students through the fullness of the University’s history is not only antithetical to the University’s mission, but also amplifies the University’s unsettling relationship with the student voice. Basically, if students are not saying what the University wants, then the University jumps to censorship. That does not sound like the makings of the best school in the nation for free speech.
In the grand scheme of free speech, the unwarranted treatment of pro-Palestine protestors goes hand-in-hand with the struggle of student-run groups like the Guide Service against University administration overreach and censorship. Clubs on Grounds, especially ones that form around a policy interest or passion like Students for Justice in Palestine, create important spaces for discourse and free speech. As such, these groups contribute to an ethos of free speech at this University. These spaces should be unambiguously protected by the University, especially if the University is going to marshall their implausible free speech rating and the concept of student self-governance as a massive selling point. But by forcefully disbanding a protest based on poorly-written rules and, in the same way, forcefully suspending a student-run group based on shaky contractual ground, the University undermines free speech at large.
To be sure, the University has protected free speech in the past. Professors have publicly spoken against the University’s actions on May 4 to little administrative punishment — yet. But if the University is going to gallivant around with this shiny new award, they cannot choose to ignore multiple transgressions against the student population. The new protest restrictions which have emerged in light of the encampment and these threats to student-run groups like the Guide Service are representative of exactly how the University plans to change free speech after their new title. Students must remember the past in order to protect the future of free speech — and, in the meantime, avoid U.Va. Today unless they seek biased and less than fully honest reporting.
Scarlett Sullivan is a senior columnist for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. Columns represent the views of the authors alone.
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