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THE ALESTLE WILL NOT HAVE A PRINT EDITION THE WEEK OF NOV. 23 thursday, 11.16.17
REMEMBERING MLB LEGEND ROY HALLADAY page 7
alton — east st. louis — edwardsville
vol. LXXX no. XVIII
Fire on campus:
MUC closed for nearly two hours MIRANDA LINTZENICH lifestyles editor
Members of SIUE’s ROTC program march in the Veteran’s Day Parade Saturday on North Main Street in Edwardsville.
The fire alarms inside the Morris University Center sounded Wednesday after smoke filled the main dining area, Center Court. Students, faculty and staff were urged to evacuate and told over the intercoms it was not a drill. The smoke was from a fire which broke out in the tunnel area underneath the MUC. It was called into the SIUE police dispatch around 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, leading to the MUC’s evacuation for nearly 2 hours. The building was cleared for reentry at 3:12 p.m, according to SIUE’s text message alert system According to Edwardsville Fire Chief Rick Welle, the fire itself was not a dumpster fire, but instead a fire in the trash compactor that was attached to the dumpster. “We will try to investigate to see if [the cause was due to] the machinery or if from a cigarette, or something like that,” Welle said. “Given the size, it will be difficult to find the determination.” In total, the Edwardsville Fire Department supplied three engines and eight personnel. According to SIUE Police Chief Kevin Schmoll, as soon as they got the call, an officer reported to the scene, and saw there was smoke inside the tunnel. SEE FIRE ON PAGE 3
I Photo by Alison Gregory / The Alestle
Policy and reason:
A closer look at the College Republicans of SIUE’s lawsuit against the university
RYAN BIERI editor-in-chief
The College Republicans of SIUE are currently suing the university over policies they claim violate students’ First Amendment rights. The main policy in question, the demonstration policy, currently states that demonstrations on campus should occur “within the paver marked section of Stratton Quadrangle and/or the Builders of the University Plaza,” and that demonstration organizers should give the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Administration 48 hours advance notice of any planned demonstrations. Troy Kohne, president of the College Republicans of SIUE and a junior public health major from Oakville, Missouri, said the policies violate the First Amendment’s right to free speech. “The First Amendment is the only permission you need to speak on campus freely, and with this — these rules and the speech zone — that’s not true here,” Kohne said. Vice Chancellor for Administration Rich Walker declined to speak on the lawsuit specifically, but was willing to talk about university policy with The Alestle. Walker said the university’s Student Conduct Code, which states “a student may appropriately express political or social views in accordance with prevailing law and University policy,” maintains students’ First Amendment rights. “There are three policies on campus regarding speaking — there’s the demonstration policy, the solicitation policy and the Student Conduct Code. The Student
Conduct Code allows any student to speak anywhere at any time. So, there is no such thing as restricting [expression] to any specific area [in current university policy],” Walker said. The College Republicans are being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group. Outreach Chairman for the College Republicans of SIUE Myles Nelson, a sophomore political science major from Collinsville, Illinois, said the College Republicans chose the ADF because of his former involvement with a conservative group in high school. “I was a Young America’s Foundation alumni, I guess you could say. I started a club at my high school in Collinsville, and they recommended [the ADF] for this,” Nelson said. The lawsuit alleges SIUE’s Free Speech Zone is the area in a 20-foot radius of the Rock on the Quad, but Walker said the demonstration policy and Student Conduct Code provide for a much larger area. “There is a free speech zone that is much bigger than the Rock, it includes all of the Quad, all of the builders plaza and the area that connects the two. It’s about 70,000 square feet, which is about 15 basketball courts. But, for student groups, it also allows [for speech] anywhere on campus through the student conduct policy. [Campus] is about 2,660 acres. If a student group wants to go demonstrate in the woods, OK. If they want to demonstrate at Korte stadium, OK. We would like to know about it so that, for both of our sake, we can coordinate the scheduling of the location, but if
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not, we can respond, we can help them,” Walker said. Tyson Langhofer, the College Republicans’ lawyer through the ADF, said their goal is to open up the demonstration policy to more of campus. “No student should have to get permission to speak in the open outdoor areas of campus. Our goal is for the open outdoor areas of campus to be open to all students to speak without prior permission,” Langhofer said. Walker said he had never personally had any interaction with the College Republicans prior to the suit, but his office had coordinated event scheduling with them in the past. He also said, to his knowledge, the policies had never been used to shut down a student organization’s event. Additionally, Walker said the university has ways of dealing with demonstrations that do not go through his office for approval first. “In fact, in the event of a spontaneous demonstration, as long as there’s no conflict with one going on already, great, we have no problem with that,” Walker said. Walker said his office and the university police receive complaints about demonstrations fairly regularly, but that the administration and SIUE PD only step in if the event or its placement is distracting to normal university functions or it is blocking a walkway. He said those decisions are made on a content-neutral basis. “If someone has their speakers turned to Peck Hall and [is] blasting their message, we’re going to tell them to turn it down. If it’s loud enough to conflict the
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classes going on inside or if they have a display that’s blocking a sidewalk, we’re going to tell them to relocate their display to somewhere that’s more open. But we [do not] shut them down,” Walker said Langhofer said that no matter how the policy is used, it’s still in violation of the First Amendment. “Regardless of how they exercise that power, there is a university administrator who has the power to say to you ‘You can’t speak here, but you can,’ and the Supreme Court has held, on numerous occasions, that government policies that grant unbridled discretion to government officials to determine who can speak, that is a viewpoint-based policy, because it allows for the government official to exercise that discretion in a content-based manner, regardless of whether the policy says they can look into that content,” Langhofer said. The lawsuit ADF brought to the university, as seen on their website, claims that SIUE’s policy requires 90 days advance notice before a potentially controversial event, which is not reflected anywhere in the current university demonstration policy. Walker said there are no instances that require more than 48 hours notice to the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Administration. The Alestle brought up this inconsistency to Langhofer, and he said that the version of the policy he had referenced in the suit was the policy approved in June 2013, not the one approved this past August. “I don’t know when they changed it on the website, but
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that’s where I pulled it — I pulled it down a couple weeks, maybe a week before [Oct. 25], I don’t know the exact date,” Langhofer said. “If they’ve amended it since then, that’s fine, we’ll look at the current one. Regardless of whether it’s 90 days, or any kind of advanced notice, treating any speaking event differently because it’s controversial in nature is a viewpoint based policy, and it’s unconstitutional.” Walker said there are ways a student or student organization can recommend a change in a policy on campus, and that the process is as simple as going to an administrator to talk to them about the policy. “We would discuss [any suggestion] when we get it. I don’t want to restrict anyone [by] just saying ‘You can only go through me, or anybody else.’ There are four vice chancellors and a chancellor, there are lots of deans, directors out there — you’re able to go to whoever you know and make a recommendation,” Walker said. Walker also said those steps apply to any sort of policy change on campus. He additionally recommends students approach Student Government if there are changes they wish to see. However, Kohne said the policy changes they want implemented needed to be done as soon as possible. “Each day that the policy is still in place is another day that their students are restricted in their free speech,” Kohne said.
RYAN BIERI
650-3527 @rbieri_alestle rbieri@alestlelive.com
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