MSU bullies First Amendment

Question: What do Michigan State University statist administrators officials do to prevent bullying on campus? 

Answer: They violate the First Amendment rights of all students on campus.

That’s right. Many MSU students like to mount whiteboards on their dormitory room doors as a means to communicate with other students. Some of the messages left anonymously by some of the students on some of those whiteboards might be interpreted by some individuals as offensive.

So the MSU officials have decided to ban all messages on all whiteboards on all dormitory room doors – because they might possibly be used for bullying. Chalk blackboards are OK. All whiteboards are banned. 

It’s like banning all messages written on white paper and scotch taped to dormitory doors. It’s like banning all messages on all dormitory doors in order to prevent a few negative incidents of bullying.  

 “In any given month, there are several incidents like this. There was no one incident that was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said the MSU director of University Residential Services Communications. “Sometimes these things are racial; sometimes they’re sexual in nature. There are all sorts of things that happen.”

In short, since bullying happens sometimes, the MSU director of University Residential Services Communications thinks it is perfectly proper to violate the First Amendment rights of students who like to hang whiteboards on their dorm room doors.

Students are baffled by the ban. They understand only too well that banning whiteboards is totally unnecessary, that their rights are being trashed. “People are going to say things no matter what, whether it’s to their faces or on a whiteboard, it’s just something you can’t always control,” said one university freshman.

Officials candidly acknowledge that the ban won’t prevent people determined to leave harmful messages through other avenues. Eliminating whiteboards is meant to address impulsive scribbles. 

“These are mostly activities of opportunity. (Students) are walking down the hall and there’s a ready writing surface and a pen right there waiting for them,” the statist explains sad. “These are not things, generally, where people are targeting people.”

I wonder what the statists will ban next in the interests of preventing any possible incidents of bullying – Facebook? Twitter? Every other form of social media? 

No matter what, it appears that the MSU officials, in order to prevent possible bullying, are more than willing to bully the First Amendment.