It’s nice waking up to an email like this, and being able to tell the very effective TPM task force their work is done. One less weekly meeting! More on the Senate website here: https://blogs.uoregon.edu/senate/2017/02/14/open-mike-free-expression-on-campus-rights-and-some-responsibilities/
From: Mike Schill <[email protected]>
Subject: Time, Place and Manner rules
Date: February 14, 2017 at 5:51:47 AM PST
To: Chris Sinclair <[email protected]>, William Harbaugh <[email protected]>
Hi Bill and Chris,
After discussing the matter with you two, Kevin Reed and other senior staff, I have decided to withdraw our proposal for time, place and manner rules. While I still believe that these rules are advisable to protect content neutrality, I am also convinced that we need to do more work in educating the community and building consensus around them. The UO has no shortage of pressing issues, difficult problems and wonderful opportunities for us to work on together now. Therefore, I am putting the time, place and manner proposal on hold for the foreseeable future.
Best,
Mike
“While I still believe that these rules are advisable to protect content neutrality,”
This is where I’m going to lead us…
“I am also convinced that we need to do more work in educating the community and building consensus around them.”
…but it is against popular opinion at the moment, and I’m not willing to pay the political capital. (We should hire some more advertisers to tell people on campus what their opinion should be!)
“The UO has no shortage of pressing issues, difficult problems and wonderful opportunities for us to work on together now. Therefore, I am putting the time, place and manner proposal on hold for the foreseeable future.”
See you guys in six months with more of the same. Hopefully people care less about their rights then, or are at least gone for summer.
We talked, Schill listened, and then he changed his mind. That’s the way free speech is supposed to work. Give the man a little credit!
“content neutrality”??? Free speech is not about content neutrality, in fact it is often far, sometimes even offensively far, from it. You want union members to have their content be neutral during bargaining? I mean, aside from saying to you “Good luck with that LOL” I would like you to define what you mean by those two words, President Schill — but I think trying to do so would really lead down a path you don’t want to tread on.
Content Neutrality just means that if the university restricts free speech – say by banning JH lobby sit-ins that prevent the use of the lobby for its regular purposes – those restrictions must be applied to all speech regardless of its content. To put it another way, the university can’t discriminate against speech it doesn’t like.
Ah, thank you for that clarification. I had not heard this term before.