(Freedom.news) It’s an appalling development but one deemed necessary by an increasing number of students attending American universities these days – they have to hide out in order to exercise their First Amendment right to speak freely and associate with whom they choose.
Here’s just the latest case in point: Students at prestigious Brown University, which was founded more than two decades before the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, have had to go underground so they can speak their mind without retribution from a minority of minority students and a hostile school administration, the Washington Examiner reported.
As further reported by National Review Online, a secret underground forum was created last year with the sole expressed purpose of allowing students to freely discuss controversial subjects:
Think of that. At Brown, there is an underground group whose purpose is to allow kids to say what they ought to be free to say above ground.
The group came about in this way: Brown was to host a debate on the issue of campus rape. In one corner was Jessica Valenti, a radical feminist, and in the other was Wendy McElroy, a radical libertarian. It was suspected that McElroy would deny there was a “culture of rape.” And this was intolerable to some students, who protested mightily — in advance, mind you.
So, the group – Reason@Brown – was formed by freshman Chris Robotham, in order to allow free speech in the very country that enshrined that “inalienable” right in its founding governing document. The group has about 100 members, according to The WE.
“I am willing to put my neck on the line and if people want to say I am some kind of ist, or a violent oppressor on account of my white masculinity, etc., that’s fine, that’s their prerogative, but I think there are a lot of people, including my freshman-year self, who would not be comfortable putting their neck on the line but who, to be perfectly frank, deserve to have the intellectual discussions promised to them in Brown’s advertising and for which they may be paying some six-figure amount,” Robotham told National Review.
The freshman noted that students who meet underground to speak freely are “more conservative than the general Brown population, which isn’t saying much.” He told NR that some of the members support Donald Trump for president, some are supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders, and just about everyone else in between, though he believes most will probably vote for the eventual Democratic nominee.
But that should tell everyone something about the brand of liberalism being practiced by campus protestors; it is they who are in the extreme, NR pointed out.
One group member, Marie Willersrud, who hails from Oslo, Norway, said free speech limits imposed by crybullies on campus is not what she envisioned when she came to Brown.
“I have a lot of fun conversations with Americans except when it comes to politics,” Willersrud said. “I find myself in a place where a large percentage of the student body wants to shut down debates that include unpopular opinions, and the university backs them,” she told NR. “This is not what I signed up for.”
It’s also not likely what a great many Brown students signed up for, truth be known
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