MORGANTOWN – A bill to protect free speech rights on college campuses met with unanimous approval in the Senate Education Committee on Thursday.
SB 657 is called the Forming Open and Robust University Minds (FORUM) Act.
It runs nine pages and has a number of provisions. Before naming them it lists some legislative findings. Among them, higher education is taxpayer funded and the Legislature must ensure free speech is recognized. “This legislature also finds that public universities in this state and elsewhere are failing to provide adequate safeguards for the First Amendment rights of their students leading to a stifling of expression on campus.”
The bill does away with free speech zones – areas set aside to permit and essentially sequester free speech events.
Institutions must permit free speech as long as it isn’t illegal or disruptive. Colleges may restrict time, place and manner of speech “only when such restrictions employ clear, published, content and viewpoint-neutral criteria. Any such restrictions shall allow for members of the campus community to spontaneously and contemporaneously assemble, speak and distribute literature.”
Institutions may not deny a religious, political or ideological student organization any benefit or privilege available to any other student organization, or otherwise discriminate against such an organization.
The institution must publish its free-speech policies. The bill provides for legal action for students to seek relief if they allege their rights have been violated.
Hunter Plume, a WVU civil engineering and political science student, and member of the Young Americans Foundation, appeared before the committee to support the bill. “I think college as a whole should be a place where free speech is welcome campus-wide,” he said. Institutions are publicly funded but have no accountability.
Higher Education Policy Commission General Counsel Kristin Boggs said HEPC is neutral on the bill but she is comfortable with it.
She said HEPC agrees that all of campus should be a free speech area. She noted that free speech zones have gone by the wayside and WVU confirmed it no longer has one.
There was no debate and the bill passed in a voice vote. It now goes to the full Senate.
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