The "Two R's": Equality of Resources and Respect · 02 May 2005
In addition, a recent debacle at the University of Texas proves that many faculty members are entirely unaware of their own institution's policies governing academic freedom and responsible teaching. Read on for all the latest news….
Disparities in Funding Student Activities
Matthew Farrar, the chairman of the Florida State chapter of Students for Academic Freedom, has conducted a revealing study about the where his university's student fee money is going.
To make this determination, Farrar examined student government budgets dating from 1989 to the present. "What these budgets revealed was disturbing to anyone concerned about equity and fairness on college campuses like FSU," he wrote in an article for Frontpage Magazine. Farrar's research revealed that the seven figure budget of FSU's student government is distributed to student organizations in a grossly unfair manner such that "far left and radical organizations on campus receive between six and ten times as much money as is provided to campus conservatives."
In one example brought up by Farrar, when the campus gay and lesbian organization organized a drag show extravaganza they received almost $4000, while a conservative student organization on campus was allocated a smaller amount of funding to host an educational talk by a best-selling author to speak on campus.
"It's time for students to speak up against the disproportionate allocation of educational dollars to the political left on college campuses. This represents a massive subsidy to one side of the campus political debate, which cannot meet the test of fairness, diversity and inclusion to which the university otherwise pays lip service," Farrar concludes.
The full article can be read here .
Students for Academic Freedom commends Matthew for his thorough research and we encourage students at other universities to seek out these records to find out how your student fee money or student government budget is being spent. We need all chapters to conduct similar research so that we can make the strongest case possible for fairness and equity in the distribution of student funds: Equal Resources and Equal Respect.
The Academic Bill of Rights provides that "selection of speakers, allocation of funds for speakers programs, and other student activities will observe the principles of academic freedom and promote intellectual pluralism."
Why Ohio's Academics Should Support the Academic Bill of Rights
Students for Academic Freedom this week released the most thorough study to date of the current Academic Freedom policies of Ohio's public colleges and universities. The survey revealed that of eleven institutions of higher education examined, at least nine had policies similar to that in Ohio's proposed Academic Bill of Rights stressing that faculty members should take care not to introduce controversial material in the classroom that is irrelevant to the their subject of study. Unfortunately the college and university policies are not enforced and they are described as faculty responsibilities rather than student rights. The Academic Bill of Rights will change this.
This research illustrates that the oft-repeated claims that Ohio Senate Bill 24 would curtail faculty's academic freedom and censor their classroom speech are baseless and that the teacher unions and organizations who have raised them are disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst. The very policy that the bill's critics cite as most controversial is already in place (but ignored) on most of the state's public university campuses.
We need the Academic Bill of Rights because these existing policies are hidden away in faculty handbooks, faculty union contracts, or obscure sections of the university regulations where students are unlikely to find them. They are nearly always phrased as faculty responsibilities, and not as student rights, and there are rarely if ever grievance procedures specifically designed for students whose academic freedoms have been violated.
A Revealing Case at the University of Texas
A recent debacle at the University of Texas drove home this very point. As was reported in an article on the InsideHigherEd.com website, the UT Board of Regents sent out a memo last month announcing an update to its rules on faculty rights and responsibility.
Among the policies detailed in the memo was a section on "Freedom in the Classroom," which stated that, "Faculty members are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing his or her subject, but are expected not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter that has no relation to his or her subject."
The InsideHigherEd.com article reveals what happened next: "As that language spread across the Internet, some professors suggested that there was a new crackdown in the works on what goes on in faculty classrooms, apparently to pre-empt David Horowitz-style "Academic Bill of Rights" legislation to regulate faculty conduct."
As it turns out, the faculty's fears were both hysterical and utterly misguided. They were correct in thinking that the policy was similar-in fact, nearly identical-to that contained in many of the state legislative bills based on the Academic Bill of Rights. But they were wrong in thinking that it was new. The policy had actually been in place for decades, as have similar policies at universities all across the country, though a UT spokesman told InsideHigherEd that he could not recall any instance in which disciplinary proceedings had been brought against a faculty member for violating it.
This incident is highly telling and speaks to the need for an Academic Bill of Rights. If the faculty at the University of Texas are wholly unaware of the policies governing academic freedom in the classroom, how can students possibly be expected to know and understand their rights, much less pursue grievances based on them? The Academic Bill of Rights and the state legislation inspired by it would remedy this disconnect between existing policy and practice.
For more information on Students for Academic Freedom or to start a chapter, please contact Sara Dogan in our Washington, DC office at 202-393-0123 or at Sara@studentsforacademicfreedom.org.
Yours in Freedom,
Sara Dogan
National Campus Director
Students for Academic Freedom
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More Campus Victories, but Opposition from the Teachers' Unions Victory for Academic Freedom in Pennsylvania
