Is speech stifled on SIU campus?

CARBONDALE Is SIU Carbondales concern with portraying a positive public image hindering free speech on campus?

That was the question a panel tried to answer Wednesday night during the annual meeting of the Southern Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union at the law school.

Jane Adams, a Carbondale city council member, retired professor and ACLU member, moderated a discussion by Rod Sievers, spokesman for the university, William Recktenwald, an instructor in the journalism school, and graduate assistant Kyle Cheesewright about specific and broader topics that touch on the question.

Adams said she got the idea to host the panel after hearing about incidents over the past year that call into question how free campus community members are to speak their minds about problems the university faces.

The panel discussed the universitys decision, during 2011 faculty strike, to remove comments from its Facebook page critical of the administration, the universitys response to an August house party that resulted in the arrest of one student, and a teaching assistant in the college of liberal arts who was reportedly chastised for speaking out in class about Chancellor Rita Chengs spending priorities.

SIU Carbondale doesnt appear to be openly hostile toward open speech, Adams said, but leaders are more focused than ever on not disturbing a marketing image during a time when enrollment and funding arent their strongest. That, she added, creates very real tension.

I has seem to me the reason for actions by the administration were not done in the name of stomping popular ideas but rather in concern to the universitys image, Adams said.

Sievers said no one at the administrative level of the university expects bad news to be quashed.

I tell the chancellor, they (the media) are going to cover the news, but she is the chancellor and she, nobody else, is responsible for this campus, he said.

A few SIU employees in the small audience, who declined to fully identify themselves to the group for fear of repercussion, said they get the sense the administrations focus on a positive image is stifling to their ability to speak freely, even among themselves, about problems they see.

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Is speech stifled on SIU campus?