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    Anonymous ProgressiveFeb 8, 2019 at 1:51 pm

    Speaking as a progressive, I implore progressive student groups to reconsider their support for policies which limit the ability of students to protest. Today, the university’s administration is sympathetic to liberal/progressive positions and many students identify as liberal/progressive. But what about tomorrow? What if future versions of the Trinity administration are more hostile to liberal/progressive causes?

    I do not agree with any of YCT’s substantive positions when it comes to other topics, but Mitchell makes an excellent point when he states, “A lot of public campuses around the state have stringent speech codes that begin with these little seeds of things that are quite reasonable but kind of snowball into increasing strict rules.”

    Free speech should not be seen as an issue that pits conservatives vs. progressives, and it saddens me to see the left yielding this issue to the right. It should matter to every single one of us. If we impose regulations in an attempt to restrict conservative student groups those same regulations can be used to restrict liberal student groups. If you are a progressive, ask yourself this question, “How would these free speech regulations play out if members of Black Lives Matter wanted to hold a protest on campus?” If you are a conservative, ask yourself this question, “How would these free speech regulations play out if we wanted to bring Ryan Anderson back to campus?”

    I understand why the administration is trying to draft these policies, but this should be the sort of thing that unifies students on the right and the left in support of free speech. We saw this happen 55 years ago during the Free Speech Movement. Young conservatives and young liberals joined together to stand up for everyone’s right to free speech. (Wikipedia has a great summary of this important moment in our nation’s history.)

    I urge Trinity students on all sides of the spectrum to stand shoulder to shoulder in support of unregulated speech.

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Student Involvement drafts revisions to campus policies, this time with student input