Apparently, 1st Amendment Rights only apply to certain groups
(CNSNews.com) – The student senate at a Rhode Island college has drawn fire for disbanding the school's Republican group after the group refused to apologize for a satirical stunt designed to highlight political correctness on American campuses.
The College Republicans at the University of Rhode Island (URI) established a satirical scholarship to ridicule the notion of scholarships based on race, gender or nationality.
It offered a $100 grant to a student who was white, heterosexual, American and male.
In the application, applicants were asked, "In 100 words or less, what does being a white heterosexual American male mean to you? As a white heterosexual American male, what adversities have you had to deal with and overcome?"
Unamused, the senate's Student Organizations Advisory and Review Committee (SOARC) accused the group of breaking the school's anti-discrimination bylaws.
The committee then prohibited the group from awarding its "scholarship" and demanded that it publish an apology in the school paper. University officials and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) criticized the attempt to force an apology.
The Framers must be spinning in their graves over this blatent violation of Free Speech Rights. Where is the ACLU? Why are they not jumping in? Oh, that's right, the group is Conservative. My Bad!
"We're clearly upset… there will no longer be a voice on campus to challenge the leftist status quo that has become the commonplace," URI College Republicans President Ryan Bilodeau told Cybercast News Service.
Bilodeau said the scholarship was meant to be a political statement on "the absurdity in giving scholarships on the basis of the color of one's skin, sexual preference, etc."
This is liberalism and political correctness run amock. The old "free speech for me, but not for me."
Now, two points. First, I have said many times that with free speech comes responsibility and the possibility of retaliation in the public arena. That said, the free speech part in the 1st was specifically about being able to criticize the government without fear of reprisal. It says nothing about private reprisal. Which is why there are laws such as those regarding slander and libel.
Which leads to the second point. URI is a State institution, not a Federal one. The 1st Amendment says Congress shall pass no law. The "laws" passed at URI which got the group booted where at the "state" level. However (isn't there always a however?), the institution itself recieves federal money, as well as scholarships which are from federal money. Meaning that URI is actually, at least partly, under the auspices of the federal compulsion to "pass no law….abridging the freedom of speech."
Those on the Left constantly complain about BushCo destroying the Constitution. Yet, time and time again, they prove that they are all for destroying it for their own purposes.
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