First Amendment Lottery

Two extracurricular groups from college campuses 3,000 miles apart have found
themselves in similar conflicts with their respective schools. The College Republicans at San Francisco State University survived their own campus ordeal after the university decided not to press charges against them for their act of free speech. Meanwhile, all-male Christian fraternity Beta Upsilon Chi filed a lawsuit against the University of Florida and the school board who decided to interpret their First Amendment rights and withhold official school fraternity status. The Alliance Defense Fund, a legal organization defending the freedom of speech of citizens across the country, was involved in both lawsuits.

In San Francisco, the College Republicans staged an anti-terrorism rally last October, during which several members stepped on replicas of the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups officially recognized by the U.S. as terrorist cells.

The dispute began when certain Muslim students present expressed their outrage because the two flags bore the name of Allah. They interpreted the protest to be an anti-Muslim act of desecration. The school board received a formal complaint describing the “attempts to incite violence and create a hostile environment,” and investigated possible charges against the College Republicans.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) entered the dispute on behalf of the College Republicans, arguing that their protest was an act of free speech protected by the First Amendment, and that the public university could not lawfully prosecute students for engaging in political protest or for desecrating religious symbols. The university in turn replied that the investigation was focused upon the protest as a possible act of desecration against the entire Muslim religion.

According to FIRE’s press release, media from across the country rallied to the support of the accused in defense of constitutional liberty. The Northern California Chapter of the ACLU also defended the students. After the group representatives appeared before a school tribunal, the announcement came that the students would not face punishment.

A lawsuit was then filed against the university by FIRE and ADF. Both held that the school’s code of conduct was too vague and broad to be constitutionally protected, and asked for the deletion of the disciplinary records by the university. FIRE believed that the school’s Group Misconduct Policy, allowing the student organizations to be held collectively responsible for their behavior, the Sexual Harassment Policy, and a portion of the Student Code forbidding “intimidation and harassment” but failing to define the terms, all stood against the First Amendment rights of students. The codes meant a “burdensome, unnecessary investigation and five months of ridicule and harassment for these students.”

The lawsuit has created additional controversy for the seemingly resolved situation. However, social conflicts in the past at SFSU have mirrored the recent confrontation.

The students at the rally heard the cries of a certain Muslim student complaining against their desecration of Allah. The College Republicans, as they would maintain throughout the investigation, had not known what the Arabic symbol on the flag had really meant, and invited the student to cross out the name of Allah and help ameliorate the problem. Also present at the rally was a KKK flag that was desecrated, reported Reason magazine. The KKK flag displayed the Christian symbol of the cross, but nobody issued a complaint about that protest.

Reason also noted that a dramatic protest had previously taken place on the campus before the anti-terrorist rally. Posters had appeared prominently across campus. The images contained pictures of soup cans possessing labels with dead babies on them, the caption reading “canned Palestinian children meat, slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American license.” No investigation occurred by the public university on the controversial demonstration against the Jewish religion.

The First Amendment has been recently interpreted by the Supreme Court to allow burning of American flags by citizens. In a case where students were clearly staging an anti-terrorist protest, as the two flags bearing the name of Allah were of terrorist organizations, it is hard to fathom how a public university could still jeopardize the rights to free speech of students who had done nothing unconstitutional.

Speaking of unconstitutional, the Beta Upsilon Chi (Brothers Under Christ) fraternity in Florida has maintained a futile struggle to obtain official student organization status at the University of Florida since May. Why has the university withheld status? According to the lawsuit, the organization practices sex discrimination and religious discrimination. Since it is an all-male fraternity, and in its constitution requires members to be Christians, it violates the school organization and Greek system regulations. Because of this, the fraternity is unable to obtain benefits available to other campus organizations, such as meeting space and the ability to officially advertise and recruit members.

The university’s spin on student interests and their limits is not completely unprecedented. Timothy J. Tracey, an attorney with the Christian Legal Society working on the lawsuit, mentioned three other cases of religious discrimination against campus fraternities. Another Beta Upsilon Chi fraternity faced discrimination at the University of Georgia, but was eventually accepted into the Greek system. At UNC-Chapel Hill, a Christian fraternity was singled out and not accepted into the Greek system. A Jewish fraternity at a New York university faced the same opposition, but eventually gained official status.

“[The University of Florida] recognizes the Women’s Chorale and Men’s Ice Hockey, even though they are single-sex organizations,” stated Tim Tracey. “Why then is the university telling this fraternity it cannot limit its membership to Christian men?”

Tracey believed that the school had singled out the fraternity for religious reasons, since the accusations were so unorthodox. Also, the official status granted to other Christian organizations on campus in the last two years will become void after the upcoming academic year, in view of the BUC fraternity situation. Tracey added that no formal complaint had been filed to the university—the very application for organization status by the fraternity was enough to spawn the investigation and decision by the university.

A letter was written by the Alliance Defense Fund and Christian Legal Society to the university, implying that the school had one week to reverse its stance before the groups went ahead with the lawsuit. The school is “looking at” the situation currently.

They might also want to re-consider their rock-hard stance against the cherished First Amendment rights of fellow American citizens.

Matt Hadro is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.