On Sept. 1, 2019, Senate Bill 18 went into effect. This bill pertains to the protection of expression on campus for all public higher education institutions in Texas. It deems a public university’s outside areas as traditional public forums. This means that anybody, even those not affiliated with the UTSA, can engage in free speech activities on campus.
This bill is really nice if someone wants to have friends outside of UTSA visit and hang out. Also, it can encourage intellectual discussions between groups of opposing viewpoints. On the other hand, it can be rather troublesome when people take advantage of their free speech and just make the campus an overall negative place to be around.
For example, an anti-abortion group patrolled the Sombrilla over the course of a few days last month. Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion — regardless of how absurd it may be — but actively exposing the public to posters of aborted fetuses is taking the right to free speech to a rather extreme level.
UTSA states on its website, “However, the law does not mean that individuals may say whatever they wish, wherever they wish. UTSA may, and does, reasonably regulate the time, place and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the university. Still, these are narrow exceptions to the general principle of freedom of expression, and it is vitally important that these exceptions never be used in a manner that is inconsistent with.”
They do not seem to have done anything about controlling what random people expose the student body to, especially since it goes against their poster policy that states posting on campus is not allowed if it contains material that is “obscene, vulgar, or libelous.” Clearly, UTSA is not doing enough to monitor what free speech they are actually enforcing. Instances like this are just going to cause more conflict than actual discussion.
Freedom of speech does not equal freedom from consequence. This is why UTSA claims that they also have the right to restrict expression that “violates the law, falsely defames a specific individual, constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests, or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the university.”
This is a reasonable thing to do if people want to exercise the First Amendment at UTSA; everybody needs to be aware that just because one has the right to free speech does not mean that said speech will be intelligent. The issue is that UTSA does not seem to be doing a good job of restricting forms of expression that could be disturbing, triggering and only serve to upset others.
