While we were home on spring break, a video depicting members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity at Oklahoma University singing a racist cheer made the rounds of national media outlets.
The chant was ignorant, offensive, intolerant, unforgivable and everything else negative about what many of us would like to think is a bygone era all rolled into one video clip. For all the awful things it was, the song should not be grounds for expulsion from a public university.
The first amendment of the United States Constitution unequivocally protects the freedom of speech, even the speech we don’t like. The importance and degree of protection afforded by our freedom of speech has been upheld again and again by our nation’s highest court; National Socialist Party v. Skokie (1977) permitted Nazis to parade down the streets of a community of Holocaust survivors, Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) allowed Brandenburg to advocate that the KKK overthrow the government and Terminello v. Chicago (1949) even held that a racist speech that was so offensive that it caused a riot was protected.
These cases clearly state that the government cannot prosecute or discriminate against individuals based on their speech, no matter how discriminatory that speech is. And a public university, like Oklahoma University or University of South Carolina, is defined as such because it receives government funds and is subject to government rules and regulations — including those requiring the protection of free speech. When Oklahoma University picks and chooses what it allows its students to say, the state of Oklahoma is by extension guilty of the same.
The umbrella of protection for speech is so broad because there is no other way to allow truly free speech. To borrow the words of Sir Salman Rushdie, “the point about it is the moment you limit free speech, it is not free speech. The point is that [it is] free.” Putting restrictions of any kind on what people can and can’t say is to destroy one of the core Constitutional rights that so many people have fought and died for; free speech rights are designed to protect the exact kinds of speech that people find deplorable. After all, the kinds of speech that people do like don’t need protection.
When Oklahoma University expelled two students for their involvement with this video, they violated the law, but even more importantly, they violated the principles that this country is founded on.
These students are atrocious individuals who deserved every ounce of punishment they received from private organizations (such as the national leadership of SAE, who has revoked the entire Oklahoma University chapter’s license), who have the freedom to choose which speech they wish to associate or dissociate themselves with. However, these bigots do not deserve to be penalized by their government for their ideas, beliefs or expressions, no matter how twisted they are.
Oklahoma University should instead mimic Voltaire, who said, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but will defend to the death your right to say it."