Cal State Monterey Bay bans signs with ‘offensive language’ in dorms

Students at California State University Monterey Bay wishing to put up posters in the residence halls should think twice — the public school’s Posting/Advertising policy says signs can’t contain “offensive language.” This policy allows administrators to restrict a great deal of protected speech, so we’ve made it FIRE’s Speech Code of the Month for March.

Students at CSUMB are able to submit posters and flyers about events and activities to the housing office for resident assistants to hang or distribute to residents of the dorms. However, they’re told signs that contain “offensive language are strictly prohibited.” 

It makes sense that the posting and distribution of literature about events in the residence halls isn’t just a free-for-all — hallways could become plastered with posters about the same outdated event, so it may be reasonable for the school to put in place certain viewpoint-neutral criteria for approving and removing materials in these particular limited spaces. However, what the government can’t do (and in this case, the government actor is a public university) is place viewpoint-based restrictions on a public forum it has opened up for expression. 

In Cohen v. California, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a Vietnam War protester arrested for entering a courthouse wearing a jacket with the words “Fuck the Draft” on the back.

A ban on “offensive language” necessarily calls for the administrator tasked with approving materials to evaluate the material based on the viewpoints contained therein. After all, what constitutes offensive language is entirely subjective. And decades of legal precedent make clear that the First Amendment does indeed protect subjectively offensive speech.

In Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri, for example, the Supreme Court held that “the mere dissemination of ideas—no matter how offensive to good taste—on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of ‘conventions of decency.’”

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And that principle extends to offensive language. In Cohen v. California, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a Vietnam War protester arrested for entering a courthouse wearing a jacket with the words “Fuck the Draft” on the back. The Court held that the four-letter word on his jacket, though “perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre,” is protected speech, famously declaring, “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” 

Under CSUMB’s policy, students wouldn’t even be allowed to put a photo of the protester’s jacket on a poster advertising a seminar or event about the landmark case. 

And CSUMB’s idea of what constitutes offensive language may be a lot broader than four-letter words. After all, as we discussed just last month, the university has urged students to “think broadly” about what could constitute racism and report potential slights to the administration. Those evaluating materials in the housing office may reasonably assume that any controversial expression with the potential to cause offense is off-limits. 

Please join FIRE in urging CSUMB to revise its policy to provide only viewpoint-neutral criteria for approving posters, so the walls of the dorms are no longer a silent frozen tundra for student speech.