Category: News

When it comes to outsiders, especially those wearing military uniforms and suits, the ranching and logging families of Otero County have always been a little suspicious.

But one newcomer, a Los Angeles lawyer whose monogrammed white shirts and splashy ties contrast with his clients’ dusty boots and jeans, has become something of a hero.
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At Occidental College in Los Angeles, “unwelcome jokes, invitations, comments and looks” no longer put a student at risk of suspension or expul­sion.

For John Howard, counsel and founder of a new Los Angeles-based nonprofit group, the Individual Rights Foundation, the mystery is that they ever did.

Howard, through IRF, last year persuaded the college not to expel fraternity Alpha Tau Omega for pub­lishing a ribald limerick in its newslet­ter.

That case is among some two dozen similar pro bono suits he has filed on behalf of students facing punishment by colleges and universities for crimes of expression.

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Summary: In the mid-1980s, collegians suddenly had to worry about being “politically correct:’ Since then, this ideal has wrapped its tentacles around campus debate, smothering free speech in the name of sensitivity. Now someone’s fighting back.

In 1991, Rep. Henry Hyde, an Il­linois Republican, sponsored leg­islation that would have made it easier for students at both public and private colleges to sue over First Amendment issues. The bill was in­tended to help students who felt their right to free speech had been stifled by “PC” crusaders – liberal activists who have managed to make “political correctness” the most pressing issue on American campuses. But Hyde could find only 25 cosponsors and the bill languished. The “PC backlash” went nowhere.
Indeed, since the PC wars began in the mid-1980s with skirmishes on the canon – should Plato or Sappho be required reading – college ad­ministrators have become hypersen­sitive to the needs of women and mi­norities. Perhaps as a consequence, arguments over what should be taught in the classroom have given way to acrimonious debate on civility – how to make students get along on campus.
Pressured by vocal groups espous­ing multiculturalism, both public and private universities have adopted speech codes directed at students and faculty. Intended at first to cur­tail incidents of “hate speech;’ usu­ally racial slurs, such codes have been extended to regulate all aspects of campus life – students have been asked to remove Confederate flags from their dorm rooms and forbidden from talking with outside journalists without permission.
Howard takes on speech codes.

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SAN FRANCISCO –, John Howard had watched it happen many times before. A campus group -· usually a fraternity -runs afoul of the college speech code with a crude song, limerick or chant. Protests follow, the administration is pressured to act, and the group is eventually disciplined, suspended or thrown off campus. This time the group was the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity at California State University at Northridge (CSUN). The Greek society had been slapped with a 14-month suspension and was on the brink of losing its charter after posting a flier for a Mexican-theme party “in honor of Lupe; apparently referring to an ob· scene drinking song about a Mexican· can prostitute.
Enter Mr: Howard, San Diego lawyer, constitutional law expert and self-described “First Amendment vigilante.” Working with the Crater· attorney, he filed a lawsuit against the university for damages arising from what he claimed were violations of the Zetas’ right to freedom of speech.

It worked. Earlier this month, the administration agreed to drop the suspension after just two months, despite an outcry from women’s groups and the university’s chapter of the ” Movimiento Estudiuntil Chicano de Aztlan. In return, the fraternity· agreed to apologize publicly and participate in “dispute resolution” seminars.

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