You would have to show they didn't pay the bill or degraded the services offered in some way. Contrary to popular opinion, you cannot reserve the right to refuse service to anyone without legal consequences.
They cannot discriminate, but they can impose consistent restrictions. For example, they can say "the network connection in your dorm may only be used for academic purposes" or "you may not post to discussion forums from your dorm room".
The establishment clause is about a letter written to a bishop by Thomas Jefferson explaining that the government cannot force a religion onto people and denies them the ability to restrict your choices in any religion due to the first amendment
That letter was merely Jefferson's attempt to explain the clause. The clause has older and broader origins and purposes. It is about preventing churches and denominations from gaining too much influence over the government. What it means in practice is defined by the Supreme Court (see below).
There is a completely documented history surrounding the issues of slavery and it is well known that many of the states never would have ratified the constitution if slavery was prohibited by it. Some people actually tried to abolish slavery in the constitution and it was intentionally removed in order to gain acceptance of all 13 original colonies.
Yes, as a compromise, the Constitution did not explicitly prohibit slavery (nor did it create a legal basis for slavery). What I said was that slavery was "in violation of the intent and meaning of the Constitution", a statement that I stand by.
The US constitution does not prevent schools funded by government from offering anything religious nor does it restrict religious views being expressed on infrastructure possessed by them
Since 1971, courts use the Lemon test under which many practices that used to be commonplace have been ruled unconstitutional (there were many prior court decisions leading up to this). The Lemon test originated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, which was about public funding for schools that also offered religious instruction (and basically ruled such funding unconstitutional).
You cannot reinvent history and redefine what words mean just to make an argument.
Neither can you, and you keep doing that. But instead of debating calmly and objectively, you engage in ad hominems.
First, Obama is engaging in bait-and-switch: he justified tax increases with paying for the kind of infrastructure that businesses need, but that's not where the taxes go that he collects.
Second, the US federal government has a specific list of enumerated powers and duties, and creating the roads, schools, and infrastructure that businesses need is not on that list (only interstate commerce).
Third, there is competition between cities and states for businesses, and there is free movement of goods, services, people, and money between states; that keeps governmental screw-ups in check. This kind of competition does not exist at the federal level; if the federal government screws up, it screws up the entire country, irrevocably.
You've always got the option of moving to, oh, say, Belize.
There is no freedom of movement, goods, services, or money between the US and elsewhere, so most people do not have that option. Besides, instead of leaving a sinking ship, it would be better to keep the ship from sinking. The US isn't irredeemably lost, it's just had a couple of bad presidents and a bad decade. It happens.
We are still pretty far from realizing that, since there are many laws (including spending laws) that "respect" and favor Christianity.
And before you jump on me by saying that Christianity is not an "establishment of religion", what I meant to say is that there are many laws (including spending laws) that respect Christian establishments.
No, the NSU rules appear to apply to the campus network as well as the internet provided by them. Sitting in your dorm room arguing this on the internet can put you in violation of those rules.
Yes. Just like with any other Internet provider: they can cancel your access if they don't like what you say or do.
First, there is no separation of church and state in the constitution. The establishment clause simply disallows the government from forcing a religion onto people and denies them the ability to restrict your choices in any religion.
The "separation of church and state" is a shorthand for the non-establishment clause. The non-establishment clause doesn't say what you claim it says. The non-establishment clause says that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
A public funded school can and some do offer degrees in religion or religious studies and even denomination specific religions
Of course it can, provided those curricula don't actually "respect" that religion. How is this in any way relevant?
Are you seriously that daft? Slavery was not abolished in the constitutional until 80 years after the country was founded.
Slavery was clearly in violation of the intent and meaning of the US Constitution from the start; the 13th amendment merely clarified the issue. In any case, even after 1865, turning constitutional law into practice took more than a century. The point is that just because people get away with doing things one way for a long time doesn't mean that that way is constitutional.
If you want the level of separation you are suggesting, it will take an amendment to get it because it simply is not there as currently written.
I want the constitutional level of separation: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." We are still pretty far from realizing that, since there are many laws (including spending laws) that "respect" and favor Christianity.
Let's stop with the "I built it with my own two hands" BS. That only works if you are Robinson Caruso. If you start a business today, or even back in the 1700s you still have to work with a basic infrastructure that you did not build yourself.
Most entrepreneurs I know have no problem with paying local or state taxes, taxes where we see where the money is spent and where we have the option of moving away when government is screwing up. We have a problem with moving more and more functions to the federal government, where tax dollars I spend turn into bridges to nowhere to benefit some politically connected Republican in Alaska, or bail out some failing and obsolete industry, or pay for huge bonuses for Bush's and Obama's buddies in the banking industry.
And let this be a lesson for ya, it's all fun and games moving with your millions to a Caribbean tax shelter, until the local [cartel,corrupt police,militias, kidnappers, etc] come for you. Why not just keep your millions stateside, pay your taxes like a good boy, and get old and fat without these kinds of worries?
Indded. Here, the "local cartel" comes for you too, but in a much more civilized and predictable manner, usually involving the IRS, government mandates to buy from companies, subsidies, bailouts, stimulus packages, and all that.
That's simply a better argument for allowing unfettered free speech. Since it's government funded, they are barred from restricting free speech of any kind.
The government can't restrict your free speech. But it can restrict how you use government facilities, like ordering you to leave campus if you violate university rules and stop using the university Internet. Any free speech you have is free speech you make outside those restrictions on the use of government facilities.
The government cannot suppress free speech on public properties.
It can't suppress speech on public property (property dedicated to the use of the public) but it can suppress speech on state property (property that is merely owned by the state). Public universities are state property, not public property.
And saying that people can't debate, or argue, or discuss at a university is the exact opposite of what a university stands for.
Universities are many things to many people. Just because you want them to be an agent of social change and political discussion doesn't mean other people don't just want to learn how to build bridges, raise cows, or drill teeth. And I don't see what compelling interests taxpayers have to turn universities into political forums. If we want government-sponsored forums for political and social debate, let's create ones that are truly public, rather than tied to universities.
Are you saying the ONLY place you can offer your opinion is where you have paid for the entire infrastructure yourself?
You can offer your opinion in any place where you have a legal right to be present or on any medium that you have a legal right to use. In addition to places and media you own, that includes some forms of public property and some forms of private property you don't own.
RIGHTS like Free Speech don't go away just because you "pay rent" to somebody else for housing or utilities... That's WHY they're called RIGHTS.
I see you are confused by the term "free speech rights". The term refers to the First Amendment, which says "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". That does not give you a right to speak wherever you want, because there are other constitutionally guaranteed rights, like the right to property. Restrictions on speech are usually of the form "if you don't stop speaking (misusing the network, whatever), I order you off this property and if you don't comply I have you arrested for trespassing." Whenever you can legally order people to leave, you can effectively restrict their ability to speak.
All you're saying is that public universities must be ideologically neutral in whatever restrictions they place on free speech, a position a fully agree with.
Lukianoff, however, is complaining that on-campus speech restrictions exist in the first place. But public universities can restrict on-campus speech and speech using university resources as long as they are consistent about it and as long as they don't veer into restricting private speech. You just affirmed that yourself.
Lukianoff's premise is wrong: universities haven't become the "most authoritarian institution", many of them have always been somewhat restrictive and authoritarian. And I'm not sure why anybody believes that organizations that teaches students how to manipulate DNA or solve integrals automatically need to become political or religious forums.
(Incidentally, the UofV case is about redistribution of student activity fees, not even tax dollars.)
No, it means that you can only use public resources in accordance with legal and constitutional restrictions. Those are indeed onerous restrictions and limit what public institutions can do.
And we're not talking about 1/n tax payer here. I'd say about a third of the US population are socially conservative, a third in the middle, and a third liberal and/or progressive. On issues like evolution and religion, no matter what stance you take, you are going to be forcing a large part of the population to pay for education that they find morally offensive. For public education, it means that public schools and public universities tend to stick to bland, uncontroversial policies and issues, at least as far as their community is concerned.
Like so many legal questions, I think the answer depends on the details: what does the housing contract say, how is Internet service provided, what alternatives are there, etc. And a legal remedy might be to replace dorm Internet service with a private provider, making the issue go away.
All I'm saying is that there is no general right to free speech at universities.
However, I don't believe the rules outlined were about putting things up in the university's name.
I believe the NSU rules are actually about that. They just got mixed up in many people's minds with a lot of other, more complicated on-campus speech issues.
It is about using the campus computer lab and checking in on slashdot- which if you are commenting on this story because of it's political nature and personal views being expressed would put you in violation of it.
Indeed. And after graduating, you are also in violation of workplace policies if you use your employer's computers or networks for personal use.
The US military has had a Chaplin in it and has offered/performed religious service since the inception
And this issue has been an important one in the question of separation of church and state, and considerable progress has been made. Military chaplaincy can be made compatible with the non-establishment clause, it just requires some care.
If what you say is true, the founders of the country as well as every entity that signed and ratified the US constitution must be willfully violating it.
The founders and many states "willfully" violated people's civil rights in many ways, starting with slavery. You can't turn around a nation on a dime, so when they wrote the Constitution, they knew it would take a while to realize what it stood for. But like civil rights, separation of church and state and religious liberty has made steady progress over the past 200 years.
So you don't want professors to make these decisions and you don't want administrators and bureaucrats to make them. I suppose you want tax payers to fund universities that are then run by students as they see fit?
Nobody is forcing you to attend public university. If you don't like the rules and restrictions, you are perfectly free to leave. And, yes, using public funding to promote a religious cause is in violation of the establishment clause. When "religious schools" take public funding, it is generally for other purpose.
Of course, we haven't enforced the non-establishment clause consistently in the past, but restrictions like those we are talking about here show that that is changing. You're welcome to try and sue your local public university to force them to let you put up a religious web site under their name. I predict you'll be laughed out of court.
When you are speaking on a sidewalk, it is obvious to everybody that you are speaking as an individual who happens to be in a public place. Furthermore, that sidewalk is there for any taxpayer to walk on; that's what makes it a public sidewalk.
The same does not apply to university computer resources. University computer networks are not "public", they are highly restricted in terms of who can get onto them. And when someone posts a page under a university domain name, the university's name and authority is associated with that page.
If you want to use a physical analogy, if the university campus is open to the public, you and anybody else probably have the right to get up on a soapbox and speak. But you don't have the right to climb up on the university president's balcony and address a crowd.
If you think some sort of speech should be censored, you definitely don't understand the purpose or the philosophy behind the 1st amendment and why it was ratified in the first place. Suggesting that university websites, dorm doors, or even bulletin boards should be off limits to religious expression completely misses the mark
There is no censorship here. The NSU policy, a publicly funded university, prohibits "university internet technology resources to further personal views or religious or political causes." That is, it prohibits the use of public funds and the name of a governmental institution to promote religious or political agendas.
There is no censorship because anybody is free to say whatever they want to, provided they pay for it themselves. Given that the cost of setting up a web site outside the university is zero, it is also clear that people who want to set up a private site on religion or politics at the university want to do so because they want it to appear to be associated with the university. Given that NSU is a public institution, that is exactly what the non-establishment clause is intended to prohibit.
If NSU were a private university, it would have a choice. But in that case, the networks would be privately owned by the university, and it could choose to impose arbitrary restrictions on what you can and cannot post on its websites.
Only about 13% of the UC budget comes from tuition. As long as a substantial amount of funding comes from tax payers, UC and its students and employees may not use the UC name or resources to promote private political or religious views.
Where did I say anything about "personal views"? Public universities are subject to restrictions that we place on all public, tax-payer funded institutions and organizations. The IRS can't tell you to become a Christian or atheist. An IRS employee can't publish on irs.gov his opinions about Christianity or atheism. And it's the same with public universities. A public university, by necessity, is a rather politically, religiously, and culturally sterile place. At private universities, pretty much anything goes, from extreme conformity in some conservative Christian and progressivist places, to universities that try to avoid any kind of controversy, to many universities that encourage open debate and disagreement. It's a free country: you get to pick the university you like.
You're saying that good universities should allow free and open discussion as part of their educational experience, and I agree. But that's a question of how the university chooses to structure its education. You don't have an automatic "free speech right" on campus. If you don't like the way a university restricts your speech, choose a different university.
Tax payers pay for a large part of these universities, that's what makes them public universities. If you don't like the restrictions that come with that, attend a fully privately funded university; there are enough of them around, and they can adopt whatever policies they like.
so if you are using your personal computing device you need to go off campus to post your opinions??
You shouldn't use public university networks or university web sites to promote your religious or political views. If that means you have to go outside campus to update your Bible website, like the rest of us, then so be it. I don't see why I should pay taxes so that you can promote your religion.
this should not be used to force me to be atheist.
It doesn't force you to "be" anything. The policy simply prohibits taxpayer funded resources or the name of a publicly funded university to promote your religious views, whatever they may be.
Slashdot Mirror
They cannot discriminate, but they can impose consistent restrictions. For example, they can say "the network connection in your dorm may only be used for academic purposes" or "you may not post to discussion forums from your dorm room".
That letter was merely Jefferson's attempt to explain the clause. The clause has older and broader origins and purposes. It is about preventing churches and denominations from gaining too much influence over the government. What it means in practice is defined by the Supreme Court (see below).
Yes, as a compromise, the Constitution did not explicitly prohibit slavery (nor did it create a legal basis for slavery). What I said was that slavery was "in violation of the intent and meaning of the Constitution", a statement that I stand by.
Since 1971, courts use the Lemon test under which many practices that used to be commonplace have been ruled unconstitutional (there were many prior court decisions leading up to this). The Lemon test originated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, which was about public funding for schools that also offered religious instruction (and basically ruled such funding unconstitutional).
Neither can you, and you keep doing that. But instead of debating calmly and objectively, you engage in ad hominems.
First, Obama is engaging in bait-and-switch: he justified tax increases with paying for the kind of infrastructure that businesses need, but that's not where the taxes go that he collects.
Second, the US federal government has a specific list of enumerated powers and duties, and creating the roads, schools, and infrastructure that businesses need is not on that list (only interstate commerce).
Third, there is competition between cities and states for businesses, and there is free movement of goods, services, people, and money between states; that keeps governmental screw-ups in check. This kind of competition does not exist at the federal level; if the federal government screws up, it screws up the entire country, irrevocably.
There is no freedom of movement, goods, services, or money between the US and elsewhere, so most people do not have that option. Besides, instead of leaving a sinking ship, it would be better to keep the ship from sinking. The US isn't irredeemably lost, it's just had a couple of bad presidents and a bad decade. It happens.
And before you jump on me by saying that Christianity is not an "establishment of religion", what I meant to say is that there are many laws (including spending laws) that respect Christian establishments.
Yes. Just like with any other Internet provider: they can cancel your access if they don't like what you say or do.
The "separation of church and state" is a shorthand for the non-establishment clause. The non-establishment clause doesn't say what you claim it says. The non-establishment clause says that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Of course it can, provided those curricula don't actually "respect" that religion. How is this in any way relevant?
Slavery was clearly in violation of the intent and meaning of the US Constitution from the start; the 13th amendment merely clarified the issue. In any case, even after 1865, turning constitutional law into practice took more than a century. The point is that just because people get away with doing things one way for a long time doesn't mean that that way is constitutional.
I want the constitutional level of separation: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." We are still pretty far from realizing that, since there are many laws (including spending laws) that "respect" and favor Christianity.
It also is rated as a highly corrupt nation, however:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_index
Most entrepreneurs I know have no problem with paying local or state taxes, taxes where we see where the money is spent and where we have the option of moving away when government is screwing up. We have a problem with moving more and more functions to the federal government, where tax dollars I spend turn into bridges to nowhere to benefit some politically connected Republican in Alaska, or bail out some failing and obsolete industry, or pay for huge bonuses for Bush's and Obama's buddies in the banking industry.
Indded. Here, the "local cartel" comes for you too, but in a much more civilized and predictable manner, usually involving the IRS, government mandates to buy from companies, subsidies, bailouts, stimulus packages, and all that.
The government can't restrict your free speech. But it can restrict how you use government facilities, like ordering you to leave campus if you violate university rules and stop using the university Internet. Any free speech you have is free speech you make outside those restrictions on the use of government facilities.
It can't suppress speech on public property (property dedicated to the use of the public) but it can suppress speech on state property (property that is merely owned by the state). Public universities are state property, not public property.
Universities are many things to many people. Just because you want them to be an agent of social change and political discussion doesn't mean other people don't just want to learn how to build bridges, raise cows, or drill teeth. And I don't see what compelling interests taxpayers have to turn universities into political forums. If we want government-sponsored forums for political and social debate, let's create ones that are truly public, rather than tied to universities.
You can offer your opinion in any place where you have a legal right to be present or on any medium that you have a legal right to use. In addition to places and media you own, that includes some forms of public property and some forms of private property you don't own.
I see you are confused by the term "free speech rights". The term refers to the First Amendment, which says "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". That does not give you a right to speak wherever you want, because there are other constitutionally guaranteed rights, like the right to property. Restrictions on speech are usually of the form "if you don't stop speaking (misusing the network, whatever), I order you off this property and if you don't comply I have you arrested for trespassing." Whenever you can legally order people to leave, you can effectively restrict their ability to speak.
All you're saying is that public universities must be ideologically neutral in whatever restrictions they place on free speech, a position a fully agree with.
Lukianoff, however, is complaining that on-campus speech restrictions exist in the first place. But public universities can restrict on-campus speech and speech using university resources as long as they are consistent about it and as long as they don't veer into restricting private speech. You just affirmed that yourself.
Lukianoff's premise is wrong: universities haven't become the "most authoritarian institution", many of them have always been somewhat restrictive and authoritarian. And I'm not sure why anybody believes that organizations that teaches students how to manipulate DNA or solve integrals automatically need to become political or religious forums.
(Incidentally, the UofV case is about redistribution of student activity fees, not even tax dollars.)
No, it means that you can only use public resources in accordance with legal and constitutional restrictions. Those are indeed onerous restrictions and limit what public institutions can do.
And we're not talking about 1/n tax payer here. I'd say about a third of the US population are socially conservative, a third in the middle, and a third liberal and/or progressive. On issues like evolution and religion, no matter what stance you take, you are going to be forcing a large part of the population to pay for education that they find morally offensive. For public education, it means that public schools and public universities tend to stick to bland, uncontroversial policies and issues, at least as far as their community is concerned.
Like so many legal questions, I think the answer depends on the details: what does the housing contract say, how is Internet service provided, what alternatives are there, etc. And a legal remedy might be to replace dorm Internet service with a private provider, making the issue go away.
All I'm saying is that there is no general right to free speech at universities.
I believe the NSU rules are actually about that. They just got mixed up in many people's minds with a lot of other, more complicated on-campus speech issues.
Indeed. And after graduating, you are also in violation of workplace policies if you use your employer's computers or networks for personal use.
And this issue has been an important one in the question of separation of church and state, and considerable progress has been made. Military chaplaincy can be made compatible with the non-establishment clause, it just requires some care.
The founders and many states "willfully" violated people's civil rights in many ways, starting with slavery. You can't turn around a nation on a dime, so when they wrote the Constitution, they knew it would take a while to realize what it stood for. But like civil rights, separation of church and state and religious liberty has made steady progress over the past 200 years.
So you don't want professors to make these decisions and you don't want administrators and bureaucrats to make them. I suppose you want tax payers to fund universities that are then run by students as they see fit?
Nobody is forcing you to attend public university. If you don't like the rules and restrictions, you are perfectly free to leave. And, yes, using public funding to promote a religious cause is in violation of the establishment clause. When "religious schools" take public funding, it is generally for other purpose.
Of course, we haven't enforced the non-establishment clause consistently in the past, but restrictions like those we are talking about here show that that is changing. You're welcome to try and sue your local public university to force them to let you put up a religious web site under their name. I predict you'll be laughed out of court.
When you are speaking on a sidewalk, it is obvious to everybody that you are speaking as an individual who happens to be in a public place. Furthermore, that sidewalk is there for any taxpayer to walk on; that's what makes it a public sidewalk.
The same does not apply to university computer resources. University computer networks are not "public", they are highly restricted in terms of who can get onto them. And when someone posts a page under a university domain name, the university's name and authority is associated with that page.
If you want to use a physical analogy, if the university campus is open to the public, you and anybody else probably have the right to get up on a soapbox and speak. But you don't have the right to climb up on the university president's balcony and address a crowd.
There is no censorship here. The NSU policy, a publicly funded university, prohibits "university internet technology resources to further personal views or religious or political causes." That is, it prohibits the use of public funds and the name of a governmental institution to promote religious or political agendas.
There is no censorship because anybody is free to say whatever they want to, provided they pay for it themselves. Given that the cost of setting up a web site outside the university is zero, it is also clear that people who want to set up a private site on religion or politics at the university want to do so because they want it to appear to be associated with the university. Given that NSU is a public institution, that is exactly what the non-establishment clause is intended to prohibit.
If NSU were a private university, it would have a choice. But in that case, the networks would be privately owned by the university, and it could choose to impose arbitrary restrictions on what you can and cannot post on its websites.
Only about 13% of the UC budget comes from tuition. As long as a substantial amount of funding comes from tax payers, UC and its students and employees may not use the UC name or resources to promote private political or religious views.
Where did I say anything about "personal views"? Public universities are subject to restrictions that we place on all public, tax-payer funded institutions and organizations. The IRS can't tell you to become a Christian or atheist. An IRS employee can't publish on irs.gov his opinions about Christianity or atheism. And it's the same with public universities. A public university, by necessity, is a rather politically, religiously, and culturally sterile place. At private universities, pretty much anything goes, from extreme conformity in some conservative Christian and progressivist places, to universities that try to avoid any kind of controversy, to many universities that encourage open debate and disagreement. It's a free country: you get to pick the university you like.
You're saying that good universities should allow free and open discussion as part of their educational experience, and I agree. But that's a question of how the university chooses to structure its education. You don't have an automatic "free speech right" on campus. If you don't like the way a university restricts your speech, choose a different university.
Slashdot is private; if the people who pay for it don't like what I post, they can ban me and I have no problem with that.
Tax payers pay for a large part of these universities, that's what makes them public universities. If you don't like the restrictions that come with that, attend a fully privately funded university; there are enough of them around, and they can adopt whatever policies they like.
You shouldn't use public university networks or university web sites to promote your religious or political views. If that means you have to go outside campus to update your Bible website, like the rest of us, then so be it. I don't see why I should pay taxes so that you can promote your religion.
It doesn't force you to "be" anything. The policy simply prohibits taxpayer funded resources or the name of a publicly funded university to promote your religious views, whatever they may be.