Want to solve this ‘free speech’ debate on college campuses? Look to the handbook. – USA TODAY College

Police detain hundreds of demonstrators on suspicion of disorderly conduct during a protest on June 4, 2017, in Portland, Oregon. A protest dubbed Trump Free Speech by organizers was met by a large contingent of counter-demonstrators who viewed the protest as a promotion of racism. (Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images)

When I asked students to explore the rules governing speech in the student manual, I realized campuses actually have no free speech, just more or lessregulatedspeech.

For two consecutive semesters, my students wrote letters to the colleges dean and its attorney. The administrators then discussed them with the students directly. Before long, two instances transformed the conversations from hypothetical, to practical.

In the first instance, a group of students spoke out against racist comments on the social media site Yik Yak. They countered with Black Yak, paper-covered bulletin boards on which students voiced their responses to the objectionable posts. The colleges president endorsed Black Yak as a college protest that reveals discomfiting realities while promoting free speech, dialogue and community. Other students, however, called for censorship of Yik Yak and punishment of the racist posts anonymous authors.

Secondly, some students alleged that a fraternity brothers Halloween costume was racist, as he put his blonde hair in corn rows and wore an orange jump suit typically worn by prison inmates. Student leaders organized a forum for students on both sides of the costume question to address hate speech, cultural appropriation and racism on campus.

Some of my seminar students argued the best response to the Yik Yak comments and to the seemingly inappropriate Halloween costumes was dialogue and education, not campus adjudication. Others argued that free speech concerns overlooked ways the marketplace of ideas was already unequal, such as hostile comments that reinforced marginalization by silencing some students.

My students decided to dispose of platitudes about free speech and scrutinize the schools policy about speech. Disciplinary hearings are confidential, therefore so are the rulings, but the students learned details of the colleges speech code that intrigued them. They wanted to know how the college enforces these codes.

Students learned that unlike state-run institutions, private colleges are not required to adhere to the First Amendment and can regulate speech on campus in a variety of ways. Nonetheless, the colleges student code espouses free expression in the form of careful and reasoned criticism of data and opinion offered in any course, which drew student criticism because it was muted. Why was the endorsement of free speech conditional?

Speech codes in the college life manual require students to understand federal civil rights laws, mainly Title IX, which emphasizes violence domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking but also covers speech. Harassment, the manual stipulates, includes advertisements or postings of offensive, indecent or abusive material of a sexual nature.

My students read the 1999 decision in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, and knew the Supreme Courts standards for defining a hostile environment:plaintiff must show harassment that is so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims educational experience, that the victims are effectively denied equal access to an institutions resources and opportunities. Our schools speech codes do not mention severe, pervasive or objectively offensive.

My students found the college life manual does not refer to racial harassment or Title VI, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color and national origin at institutions receiving federal assistance. One student argued for a revised manual to include a similar approach to racial harassment as it does to sexual harassment.

The manuals vague language forbids conduct unbecoming of a Franklin and Marshall student. This phrase bothered students. They didnt know what it meant. The manual defines conduct unbecoming as conduct that threatens, instills fear, or infringes upon the rights, dignity and integrity of any person. Students rightly noted threaten and instills fear were struck down as too broad in a 1989 court decision regarding hate speech regulation at public universities Doe v. University of Michigan.

Our college manual gives administrators the flexibility to punish hate speech as conduct unbecoming, but racial harassment is absent from the student code. The dean defended conduct unbecoming, telling students the term is defined and interpreted by the campus community. However, the studentsassessed how regulation of speech actually worked on campus andwanted to see changes made to revise the speech codes and have students serve on the student misconduct panel.

As questions of free speech continue to arise on college campuses around the country, its time to move beyond rallying slogans and choosing sides. The campus speech controversies are more complicated than being for or against free speech. Students, faculty and administrators need to know the rules governing campus speech on their campus, including where the policies get it right and where they go wrong, and where they are outdated compared to recent judicial standards. This kind of engagement leads to meaningful change in how speech is regulated on campus.

M. Alison Kibler, professor of American Studies and Womens, Gender & Sexuality Studies, is chair of American Studies at Franklin & Marshall College. Her most recent book, Censoring Racial Ridicule: Irish, Jewish and African American Struggles Over Race and Representation, 1890-1930, examines race-based censorship.

M. Alison Kibler is a member of the USA TODAY College contributor network.

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Want to solve this 'free speech' debate on college campuses? Look to the handbook. - USA TODAY College