Are Students Free to Speak Their Mind? Well at Southampton, yes.

The debate surrounding thelimitationsof free speech has been a key issue of the last fewmonths, from Charlie Hebdo to Page 3, it has not been out of the news and campus censorship is a big part of that debate.

Anyone who works in student media will know campus censorship is a big issue. Traditionally student media has been an outlet to criticise the mistakes of Universities and their Unions. But recently there has been a myriad of accusationsof Unions and Universities censoring their papers.

But Southampton isnt on that list.

New research by Spiked has described Southampton as

A students union, university or institution that, as far as we are aware, places no restrictions on free speech and expression other than where such speech or expression is unlawful.

The research looked into the Universitys policys on free speech, external speaker policies, bullying and harassment policies, equal opportunities policies. As well as the Student Unions, no platform policies, safe space policies, and student codes of conduct.

Perhaps Southamptons disaffiliation with the NUS is to thank.The NUSs no platform policy means thatNUS events and NUS officers, can not voice extremists such as the British National Party and English Defence League. Hence in 2012, whenLeeds Student Paper, printed an interview with Nick Griffin. Aaron Kiely, the NUS Black Students Officer at the time, wrote an open letter demanding the Editor removed the interview immediately, on the grounds it was voicing fascism.Other NUS policies banned voicing Julie Bindel and George Galloway. It begs the question, where do the limitations lie? If were going to ban the BNP, should we ban UKIP too? If were not, should we voice ISIS too?

Prestigious Universities such as Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh,, Kings, Leeds, Leicester, Oxford, UCL, SOAS, and Leicester have ranked among the worst Universities on Spiked list, whereas local Universities such as Solent and Winchester have joined Southampton at the top. Only 20% ranked as well as Southampton, meaning 80% limit free speech on campus, interestingly Unions tend to limit free speech more than Universities.

The Sun was the most popular banned item, followed byRobin Thickes Blurred Lines, unruly sports teams. BDS (a pro-Palestine group) and pro-life groups were also common bans.

There are a number of restrictions placed on free speech under UK law, such as harassment, and incitement to violence but a lot of these bans do not effect these.

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Are Students Free to Speak Their Mind? Well at Southampton, yes.