CFN Members Honored for Campus Activism in 2011-2012

FIRE's Campus Freedom Network is pleased to announce the winners of the 2011-2012 Incentive Program. The CFN's incentive program awards books, materials, scholarships and other items to students who work to promote liberty on campus throughout the school year. This year, we had a record number of students setting up free speech walls, hosting FIRE speakers on campus, and starting reform campaigns to change repressive speech codes at their schools. However, a few students made truly outstanding contributions to improving the campus culture for individual rights this school year, and we want to recognize their efforts here.

The 2012 first place winner is Bryant Jackson-Green, a rising senior at the University of Chicago who has been working with FIRE to change campus policies as a member of the Committee on Campus Expression. Bryant has penned op-ed pieces in The Chicago Maroon advocating for free speech and due process on campus, and his Students for a Free Society group hosted FIRE's own Azhar Majeed to discuss these issues in a speaking event this spring.

Second place winner Casey Given is a former FIRE intern and recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. Casey used the tools he learned at FIRE to advocate for free speech on Berkeley's campus, often using his political column in The Daily Californian to discuss the free speech implications of campus issues. When a member of his SFL group was punished for cursing at a campus police officer in 2010, Casey even wrote a column about the case and alerted FIRE, and the charges were eventually dropped. Casey's group also hosted FIRE President Greg Lukianoff for a speaking event on campus.

Third place winner Moriah Costa is a rising junior and journalism major at Arizona State University. Moriah's group at ASU hosted two free speech walls this year, and she distributed FIRE's guides on campus and wrote an op-ed for the Students For Liberty blog. She was featured as FIRE's January Student Spotlight student earlier this year.

You can read more about their work this year and their advice for fellow student activists at their Student Spotlight pages:

In addition to the top three winners, ten other students earned spots in the CFN's Prometheus Society for their advocacy this school year. The other 2012 Prometheus Society inductees include:

Matt Arbos, University of Central Florida '12
David Deerson, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill '13 and 2011 FIRE Intern
Morgan Freeman, Sam Houston State University '12
Andrew Kaluza, University of Texas at San Antonio '13
Nicholas Kowalski, Michigan State University '13
Alex McHugh, American University '14
Brendan Pringle, California Polytechnic State University '12
Eric Phillips, Auburn University '12
Trey Stokes, Winthrop University '14
Dan Suraci, Boston University School of Law '14

We will be featuring these students and their achievements on our Student Spotlight page and The Torch throughout the summer, so stay tuned!

From all of us here at FIRE, congratulations to all of the students who participated in the incentive program and to everyone who worked to make their schools more open for discussion and debate this year. If you are a student and you want to do more to make your campus safe for free speech, visit thecfn.org to learn more about how you can get involved, or email me any time at jaclyn@thefire.org.