RhetoricAndComposition > SectionSixtySeven > YourBlogs > FreeSpeech > FreeProposalDraft

Nowadays at college, we are bombarded with messages from all angles. On one side, the evangelist Christians are telling us that we are going to hell, on another, the university tells all students about racism and prejudice and how to correct it. All the while we are hit with political messages in the news and other media on a variety of issues. At campus, how many of these things should be tolerated? What should our great university be doing about these messages, and how are our own thoughts be heard or squelched? How should they, if at all?

For my final project, I propose a look at the rights of freedom of speech granted at Penn State and other public universities. I will delve into how our rights are limited, and look at some complicated issues including separation of church and state and hate speech. I personally care about this issue because I never want the freedom that I have to express myself to be limited. Also, at college, I want the ideas of others to flow freely, to allow personal academic growth through the unfamiliar ideas of others. This matters to all of us in the public academic community of America, because without this free and open exchange of ideas, our degrees that we worked so hard for would be a symbol of conformity and futility. Our extracurricular learning would be incomplete, and we would become far less rounded individuals.

Deciding these things is no mean feat, to be sure, but it is possible. With a firm grounding in the constitution, I hope to show what injustice, if any, can and should be changed.

Sources:

Martin Golding, Free Speech on Campus. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, April, 2000

The Center for Campus Speech <http://www.campusspeech.org/>