Rieder: Campuses need First Amendment training

Rem Rieder | USA TODAY

Now and then an episode occurs that perfectly encapsulates a situation that is completely out of whack.

One of those took place last week at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.

Last Wednesday, students at the small liberal arts school held a sit-in at the Smith College Campus Center to call attention to racism at Smith and other campuses in the wake of the high-profile protests at the University of Missouri, which led to the ouster of the University of Missouri system president and the University of Missouri-Columbia chancellor.

As you might expect, the students sought press coverage of the protest. But with a twist: only journalists who expressed solidarity with the cause were allowed in.

“We are asking that any journalists or press that cover our story participate and articulate their solidarity with black students and students of color,” Alyssa Mata-Flores, one of the organizers, told MassLive.com, a Western Massachusetts news website. “By taking a neutral stance, journalists and media are being complacent in our fight.”

And it gets worse: The article went on to say that "organizers said journalists were welcome to cover the event if they agreed to explicitly state they supported the movement in their articles."

Supported the movement in their articles.

So if they hoped to cover the event, the reporters not only had to pledge allegiance to the cause, they also had to promise to write sympathetically about the sit-in.

It's hard to imagine a more misguided understanding of the role of a free press in a democratic society. And it's truly disheartening to see that view held by students at a highly regarded institution of higher learning.

The job of the reporter is to cover the news, as fairly and, yes, as objectively as possible. No matter how noble the cause, journalists should hardly be serving as its propaganda arm. It's one thing for editorial writers, columnists, TV pundits and bloggers to opine, to take sides. That's their job.

But we desperately need reporters to lay out the facts, as clearly, thoroughly and dispassionately as possible, so the rest of us can make up our minds.

The Smith College occurrence would be bad enough if it were an isolated incident. But of course it's not. It's part of an all-too-familiar pattern of intolerance for freedom of expression on America's college campuses.

Just two weeks ago, students at the University of Missouri linked arms to prevent journalists from gaining access to an area where protesters had set up camp. Never mind that the demonstrations were front-page news across the country and were taking place on public property at a state university. The students needed a "safe space."

Much of the coverage focused on the outrageous, aggressive behavior of a Missouri professor and a campus official as they prevented student journalists from doing their jobs. One of them, professor Melissa Click, called for some "muscle" to help her send a journalist packing.

But there is another aspect of the confrontation, captured on video, that also is deeply alarming. That's the smug, self-righteous attitudes of the students as they trample the First Amendment rights of two of their fellow students.

At Yale, students have called for the head of lecturer Erika Christakis for writing, in the midst of a discussion of Halloween costumes, “Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious … a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?"

And at college after college in recent years, students have rallied to block appearances by speakers whose views don't jibe with current campus orthodoxy. Most of those speakers, of course, are conservatives.

All of which just seems so wrong. College should be a time and place for a freewheeling exchange of ideas, for exploration, for putting your views to the test. Not for hunkering down in a safe cocoon.

So a modest proposal: Just as Russia's launch of the satellite Sputnik led to a major jump-start for the United States' space program, it's time for academia to step up and launch an ambitious crusade to spread the gospel of free expression and the First Amendment on the nation's campuses.

As for Smith, it didn't cover itself with glory in the most recent situation. It went along with the students' plan. It said in a statement, "On balance, as strongly as the college prefers to err on the side of a campus open to media, the students’ opposition to it at their own event — which they had created and were hosting — was honored. Media relations staff told media that the access terms for the sit-in were established by the organizers, and introduced media to the organizers to make their requests."

It went on to say that didn't mean it supported restrictions on the media.

Right.