The University of Illinois Shits on Your Freedom of Speech

There’s an ongoing debate right now at the University of Illinois regarding university employees’ freedom of speech while on campus.  Recent communication from the University Ethics Office detailed several things that constituted “prohibited political activity.”  These were the listed items:

Preparing for or participating in any rally or event related to a specific political candidate, party, or referendum – this includes preparation and circulation of campaign materials, petitions, or literature

Soliciting contributions or votes on behalf of a particular political party or candidate

Assisting at the polls on behalf of any political party, candidate, or organization

Surveying or conducting an opinion poll related to anticipating an election outcome, or participating in a recount challenge related to an election outcome

Running for political office

The email also stated:

In order to ensure compliance with state and federal lobbying laws, University policy requires employees’ communications with state, federal and locally elected officials be reported to the Office of Governmental Relations.

As an active member of the ACLU, I have participated in email and phone campaigns this summer regarding a couple of different issues (not the least of which was the FISA bill that was passed near the beginning of the summer).  While I wasn’t representing the university in this capacity, the ambiguity of the language in the email from the ethics office causes me to question whether I should be reporting myself for contacting my elected representatives on those occasions.

In protest of these ethics guidelines, a group of university employees will be contacting their state representatives to complain about the ethics policy’s violation of the constitution, then report ourselves.

Campaign Finance Bribery Over FISA?

I’ll let you be the judge of this.  According to this article, which cites campaign finance information collected by Maplight.org, 88% of the 94 Democrats who helped pass the new FISA bill last week (after previously opposing it) received an average of $8,359 in campaign funds from the telecommunication companies over the last three years.

I don’t know if it’s that simple.  All I know is that people need to call their state representatives before this bill makes it through the Senate.  If you’re a democrat, you need to make sure that your representatives know that you won’t tolerate them rolling over for the Republicans.  Let them know that you want change!  We don’t want politicians to keep wiping their asses with the constitution!

Anonymous Blogger vs. Ignorant Police Department

I read this article today while perusing Fark.  There’s so much I could say about this, but I think the article speaks for itself.  I would like to point out the involvement of the EFF and ACLU here (as mentioned in the article).  I think that my biggest concern here has to do with the fact that the police department diverted government resources (i.e. tax dollars) in order to treat someone like a criminal for nothing more than exercising his constitutional right to free speech.  Although our officials seem to have forgotten this, we all have the right to criticize our government, either openly or anonymously.

So many of our rights as Americans are founded on freedom of speech.  I applaud “John Adams” and others who use that right to bring injustices to light and (hopefully) effect some positive change.