Free Speech Update: Please Check All Opinions at Valdosta State University Door

Welcome to Valdosta State University. Please check your opinions at the door… or take them to the “free speech area” between 12 and 1 p.m. and 5 and 6 p.m., with prior registration.

If you don’t, you may end up like T. Hayden Barnes, who opposed the building of two parking garages with student monies and ended up being “administratively withdrawn” from the university by the administration. They used the fig leaf of a Facebook description on Barnes’ site which the bureaucrats attached to the notice of withdrawal slipped under Barnes’ dormitory door. It called for readers to join in a photo contest, with the text reading, “Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?”

The university’s president, Ronald Zaccari, began attending events with a coterie of bodyguards and police officers after the Facebook printout was shown to him and has now announced his retirement, six months early. His flacks cited the Virginia Tech shooting as a precedent for tighter security.

Oh, and if you’re interested in the dangers of Project Spotlight, it’s website tells us that, “The program hopes to enable a new wave of entertainers, journalists and artists to reach their true potential by offering technology, audience and a first-of-its-kind artist-grant program.”

Just be careful about where you attempt to reach that potential.

h/t to flutterecho at Slashdot and the link to insidehighered.com

Comments

[marc]

The president of the university needs to be shipped off to an island. Rediculous. Jack Sass even said on his internet radio show that people should print a copy of the 1st amendment, piss on it and mail it to him. I agree.