Couldn’t Have Said It Better Ourselves

A great editorial in yesterday’s Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record gives us some feeling for the hometown reaction to the case of free speech protestors Allison Jaynes and Robert Sinnott, who, until FIRE’s successful intervention, were due to be punished by UNC Greensboro for having the audacity to protest an unconstitutional “free speech zone” outside the “free speech zone.” Since the News & Record is, after all, a newspaper, one would expect it to object to this kind of infringement on First Amendment rights—and we’re happy to see that it does. Its conclusion:

[UNCG] should do away with the very concept of “non-free speech” areas. A public university campus, like the rest of the United States, ought to be a free speech and assembly area from one end to the other, just as the First Amendment intends.

Amen. In the wake of FIRE’s case there, UNCG is now reconsidering its policy on free speech. Let’s hope that this editorial helps to get across to the university that neither the media nor the public will accept onerous restrictions on the right to protest and to speak freely—especially at our publicly funded universities.