Vet’s constitution won’t allow restriction of free speech

By Debra J. Saunders

San Francisco Chronicle

Published: October 24, 2013

Army veteran Robert Van Tuinen decided to celebrate U.S. Constitution Day on Sept. 17 by handing out copies of the Constitution at Modesto Junior College in California, where he is a student. If he had been at the University or California, Berkeley, or another politically correct campus, some liberal students probably would have picked an argument with him, maybe even accused him of hate speech.

But as this was Modesto Junior College, Van Tuinen didnt attract a lot of notice. Until, that is, a security guard told Van Tuinen that he couldnt hand out the Constitution. Or the Communist Manifesto, for that matter. On an edited video, Van Tuinen captured the guard explaining that passing out anything whatsoever, you have to have permission through the student development office.

An administrative aide at that office explained the schools policies for time-place-and-manner free-speech area. Students have to sign up in a binder to use a small designated space, and since two students already were protesting, Van Tuinen would have to wait his turn to speak freely and pass out literature. When Van Tuinen told her he just wanted to pass out copies of the Constitution, she asked, Umm, why?

Van Tuinen was appalled. When he served in Kuwait, he learned that the military doesnt put a high premium on free speech. Soldiers dont have the same rights as students, and the brass had little interest in his pontificating on the framers intent. Thats when I figured out the service wasnt the best place for me, he confided. But who knew that college life would be equally casual about stifling his self-expression?

Yes, Virginia, there is a California college campus where protest is not a major.

Let me confess. In this job, Ive observed campus protest at its best, that is to say, worst Berkeley students throwing incendiary objects at the chancellors home, tree-sitters camped in a campus grove for 20 interminable months and UC Davis paying a $1 million settlement to pepper-sprayed students. I cant help it, I find Van Tuinens story cute as a button.

But its not. Its not because campus personnel told a student he cannot give out copies of the U.S. Constitution. In a statement, college President Jill Stearns asserted, There is absolutely no requirement that a student register weeks in advance and hand out his literature only in a small marked area. But a security guard and staff binder suggest otherwise. The very fact that a campus has a two-person free-speech zone troubles Robert Shibley, vice president for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which has aided Van Tuinen in the free-speech lawsuit he filed against the college.

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Vet’s constitution won’t allow restriction of free speech