In the Free Speech Zone

NEIU is not a big sports school, the NCAA left in the early 1990's. Politics is often the competitive sport seen on campus. Free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and issues regarding "hate speech" are all issues that have been hotly debated over the last few years spurned on by issues ranging from military and CIA recruiting on campus to gay rights to freedom of the press to affirmative action and other causes too numerous to list.

Barring new rules from the Free Speech Taskforce, who have been studying the issue since 2004, currently the rules are that demonstrations, protests, handing out flyers inside of university buildings all must be done in what the university calls the "Free Speech Zone" which is Village Square.

Village Square is one of the busiest areas on campus being the central hub between the Student Union, the Class Room Building and the most direct indoor route to the Fine Arts Building, Building B and the Sachs Administration Building (AKA the Beehive).

A Free Speech Taskforce was established in the aftermath of an incident in Nov. 2003 involving a group called HOME (Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment). HOME set up tables in Village Square with the permission of the administration and spoke against homosexuality.

Hundreds of students reacted immediately to HOME by protesting at their table, some throwing condoms at the men from HOME. They called what HOME was saying, "hate speech" and advocated that hate speech be barred from campus.

The Free Speech Taskforce has not announced its recommendations yet. Critics of the current rules say that often they are protesting against something or someone and need to be where that something or someone is.

The Gay Lesbian Bisexual Alliance, Feminist Leadership Alliance and the Socialist Club gave a list of demands to the university after HOME's appearance in 2003. In response VP of Student Affairs Melvin Terrell imposed a moratorium on HOME and other outside groups. The students also eventually had the universities code of conduct changed to better address the concerns of the GLBT community.

In 2004 the College Republicans invited HOME to campus and they spoke at one of their meetings in a classroom during activity hour to a handful of students. Later in 2005 HOME returned to Village Square with out a sponsor. When questioned on how HOME came back as there was a moratorium on the group Terrell said, "That was 2003, its 2005, I can't tell you when it ended."

Military and CIA recruiting is also an issue of protest. As happened last winter the CIA was having a recruiting day in the P.E. Building, the NEIU Students Against the War (SAW) group came to protest. University officials signed complaints against two of the demonstrators for interrupting a campus event and battery.

The two students vigorously proclaimed their innocence on the battery charge and the university official from the placement office who claimed to be struck by the protesters is equally adamant that they are guilty. The case is still in the courts and the two students have threatened to sue the university.

Military recruiting has been an issue that was the subject of protests in the 1970's during the war in Vietnam when students took a vote on whether or not to allow military recruiters on campus.

The vote became irrelevant when a few years ago the US Congress enacted the Solomon Amendment, which was later held up on appeal to the US Supreme Court. In his majority opinion Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that if colleges and universities wanted federal monies they must allow military recruiters on campus, but also encouraged protests against those recruiters if they were found to be objectionable by those universities.

In recent years, protesting the current war in Iraq, where in 2005 two students were passing out anti military recruiting materials for attendees of a job fair held in Alumni Hall, the NEIU Police asked them to stop, as they were not in the Free Speech Zone, the students, members of SAW complied but spoke out later about the incident.

President Hahs, in an article in April 2007 issue of Insights (Pg1) said that the courts have said, "That universities can establish rules which regulate the time, manner and place of protests and that these rules do not per se threaten freedom of speech."

Students on the political left were not the only ones protesting. The now defunct College Republicans held an "affirmative action bake sale," a few years ago in which baked goods would be sold at different prices for different genders and races. Dean of Students Michael Kelly tried to have the sale canceled but after the College Republicans threatened to take legal action, the sale proceeded.

Members of the College Republicans also published a short-lived newspaper called the Thirteen Stripes. The paper's masthead read "of Northeastern Illinois University." The paper was not a chartered student organization and featured an unauthorized use of a Simpsons cartoon character on the cover of the first issue might open the university to a lawsuit from Fox Television. No suit was filed and the newspaper lasted only two issues.

The Free Speech Taskforce, formed in 2004 has yet to issue recommendations and has lost its entire student representatives. The last to leave earlier this year was former Student Trustees Peter Michalczyk. Michalczyk said he stepped down because he was frustrated with the slow progress being made by the taskforce over such a long period of time.