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1 December 7, 2012 Interim President Rob Watts Office of the President Georgia Perimeter College Decatur SA Panthersville Road Decatur, Georgia Sent via U.S. Mail and Facsimile ( ) Dear President Watts: As you can see from our list of Directors and Board of Advisors, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) unites leaders in the fields of civil rights and civil liberties, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of liberty, legal equality, freedom of religion, academic freedom, due process and, in this case, freedom of expression on America s college campuses. Our website, thefire.org, will give you a greater sense of our identity and activities. FIRE is deeply concerned about the threat to free speech and assembly presented by Georgia Perimeter College s (GPC s) Free Expression Policy and its enforcement against student David Schick. By censoring Schick pursuant to this policy, GPC has violated its moral and legal obligations as a public institution bound by the First Amendment. This is our understanding of the facts. Please inform us if you believe we are in error. Schick is a GPC student and editor-in-chief of the student newspaper The Collegian. On November 14, 2012, Schick and other members of the paper s staff joined together at GPC s Clarkston campus to distribute papers and solicit student opinions about the school s decision to cancel the fall graduation ceremony. Schick also prepared a petition, so that students who disagreed with the cancellation (for which students were reportedly not refunded their $25 registration fees) could make their opinions known to the student government. Gathering in the courtyard between buildings CD and CN, Schick initially used a megaphone to speak to students for roughly one to two hours. After this period of time, two Department of Public Safety officers told Schick to stop using the

2 2 megaphone. Schick immediately complied and returned the megaphone to the Collegian office before returning to the courtyard to continue talking to students. Approximately fifteen minutes later, the same two officers approached him again and ordered him to cease his activity, now claiming that Schick was violating GPC s Free Expression Policy. The officers informed Schick that per the policy, he was only allowed to engage in expressive activity in GPC s Free Expression Area, located in a plaza between buildings CC, CA, CB, and CG. Further, the officers informed him that the policy required him to first submit an application form to the Office of Student Life before speaking on campus. When Schick objected to these restrictions, citing his First Amendment rights, the officers told Schick that he had no choice in the matter and accompanied him to the Office of Student Life. At the Office of Student Life, Schick was informed by Clarkston campus student life director Stephan Moore that he was required to complete a Free Expression Registration Form. At this meeting, Schick discussed the restrictions with Dean of Student Services Deborah Homer. Homer agreed to let him speak outside of the Area that day, but nonetheless insisted he fill out the registration form. The form states that [u]se of the Free Expression area and any publicity material must be approved through the Office of Student Life at least three (3) working days in advance, and sets forth the limited times during which the Area may be used: Time(s) Free Expression Area is requested: The area is available Monday thru Thursday from 11:00 am 1:00 pm & 5:30 pm 7:30 pm, and Friday from 11:00 am 1:00 pm, when classes are in session [Emphasis in original.] The Free Expression Policy s prior approval requirements and restrictions on use of the Free Expression Area are published in the GPC Student Guide Book. To be clear: GPC s Free Expression Policy violates the First Amendment, both as written and as enforced against Schick. That the First Amendment is fully binding on public colleges like GPC is settled law. See Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263, (1981) ( With respect to persons entitled to be there, our cases leave no doubt that the First Amendment rights of speech and association extend to the campuses of state universities ); Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169, 180 (1972) (internal citation omitted) ( [T]he precedents of this Court leave no room for the view that, because of the acknowledged need for order, First Amendment protections should apply with less force on college campuses than in the community at large. Quite to the contrary, the vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools ). On its face, GPC s policy violates students expressive rights in several ways. First, it limits student expression to a small fraction of the campus, for a small fraction of the day which notably does not include weekends or days when classes are not in session. GPC may believe that its policy is a reasonable restriction[] on the time, place, or manner of protected speech as allowed by cases like Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791 (1989). There is nothing reasonable, however, about transforming the vast majority of the university s property indeed, public property into a censorship area, and in maintaining a system of

3 3 onerous requirements by which students must abide in order to exercise their fundamental rights. Federal case law regarding freedom of expression simply does not support the transformation of public institutions of higher education into places where constitutional protections are the exception rather than the rule. Time and again, courts have determined that to be considered legal, time, place and manner restrictions must be narrowly tailored to serve substantial governmental interests. The generalized concern for order that apparently underlies the establishment of GPC s free speech zone policy is neither specific enough nor substantial enough to justify its restrictions. This limitation alone is enough to render the regulation unconstitutional, but GPC compounds its error by requiring that all student expression occurring on campus must be both registered with and approved by campus administrators three working days in advance. Protests and demonstrations are often spontaneous responses to unfolding events; students wishing to demonstrate in response to an immediate crisis will be deprived of the impact of their message by being forced to wait three days to demonstrate, by which time the events they wished to protest may be in the past. While there may be circumstances under which it is reasonable for the university to require advanced notice of a demonstration for example, an unusually large rally for which additional security will be necessary a blanket restriction like the one here unnecessarily restricts free speech on campus. As the Supreme Court has counseled, It is offensive not only to the values protected by the First Amendment, but to the very notion of a free society that in the context of everyday public discourse a citizen must first inform the government of her desire to speak to her neighbors and then obtain a permit to do so. Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of NY, Inc. v. Village of Stratton, 536 U.S. 150, (2002). GPC would be well advised to review a recent federal court decision striking down a free speech zone policy at the University of Cincinnati that placed similar restrictions on student expression, a copy of which is attached to this letter. See University of Cincinnati Chapter of Young Americans for Liberty v. Williams, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS (S.D. Ohio Jun. 12, 2012). In that case, a federal district court in Ohio held that the University of Cincinnati violated students First Amendment rights by confining student expression to a single area on campus and requiring students to register all demonstrations, pickets, and rallies with the university ten working days in advance. The court unequivocally declared that the policy violates the First Amendment and cannot stand. Williams, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 80967, *2. While this decision is not legally binding upon GPC, the court s treatment and analysis of the University of Cincinnati s policy, including its advance notice scheme, is wholly relevant for purposes of analyzing GPC s policy. As a recent federal court ruling, this compelling and insightful decision should counsel GPC to revise its own policy in order to respect students free speech rights. The infirmities in GPC s policies are exacerbated by inconsistencies that confuse students about the extent of their rights on campus. While the Free Expression Policy explains that students must register demonstrations at least three days in advance, the Student Code of Conduct states that:

4 4 Students or student groups wishing to engage in peaceful demonstrations must obtain a Free Expression Permit to do so from the Office of Student Life at least two business days prior to the demonstration. [Emphasis added.] A mandatory two-day restriction is little better than a mandatory three-day restriction in protecting spontaneous expression, but without clarification, students are left to wonder whether their demonstrations can take place within two or three days, a burden which further complicates an already onerous restriction. Additionally, there is evidence that GPC s policy is unevenly or selectively enforced one of the many dangers of a vague policy that grants a university administration broad discretion to approve or deny student demonstrations. First, as detailed above, Dean Homer allegedly told Schick he would be allowed to demonstrate outside of the Free Expression Area after he objected to the policy. Must students raise similar objections in order to be allowed free movement throughout campus? What demonstrations qualify for leniency, and how are they judged? There are other examples of GPC s uneven enforcement of its policy. Fellow Collegian staffers who distributed papers on November 14 on GPC s Decatur and Dunwoody campuses reportedly encountered no difficulties. According to Schick, other groups have been allowed to distribute flyers outside of the Free Expression Area, and newspaper staff have previously distributed papers on the Clarkston campus with no objection from school officials. The Student Press Law Center notes Homer s claim that non-students have typically been required to use the free expression zone. This, however, is of little consolation to Schick and other students whose speech has been chilled by GPC s actions here. It is particularly regrettable in this instance that GPC s unconstitutional speech policies were enforced by the college s Public Safety officers. The sight of a student being ordered to cease his expression and escorted away by Public Safety officers is likely to have a powerful chilling effect on student speech at GPC. One of the central functions of institutions of higher learning in a free society is to serve as the ultimate free speech area. A college that is serious about the search for truth should be seeking at all times to expand open discourse, to develop intellectual inquiry, and to engage and challenge the way students think. Indeed, GPC affirms this very sentiment in its Student Code of Conduct, which provides that [s]tudents have the right to take stands on issues, to examine and discuss questions of interest, and to support legal causes. GPC s Free Expression Policy reinforces this idea even further, stating that, Georgia Perimeter College supports free expression as stated in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Please spare GPC the embarrassment of fighting against the First Amendment a statement of both law and principle by which the college is legally and morally bound. FIRE asks that GPC revise its Free Expression Policy to make clear to all campus community members and university public safety officers that students like David Schick may demonstrate in the open and public areas of the campus without the requirement of prior notice and outside of predetermined hours, and are bound only by reasonable limitations on time, place, and manner as allowed under the law. Let your students exercise their fundamental civil rights; let them speak, assemble, and protest as their consciences dictate.

5 5 FIRE would be happy to be of help with these revisions in any way we can, as we are committed to ensuring that GPC students are not subject to unconstitutional limitations on their freedom of expression. We request a response by December 21, Sincerely, Azhar Majeed Associate Director of Legal and Public Advocacy cc: Deborah Homer, Dean of Student Services, Georgia Perimeter College-Clarkston Campus Stephan Moore, Director, Office of Student Life, Georgia Perimeter College-Clarkston Campus N.T. Marinelli, Jr., Public Safety Director, Georgia Perimeter College Terry Payne, Department of Public Safety, Georgia Perimeter College-Clarkston Campus