KnightNews.com received many messages of support from students and even alumni who are outraged over how UCF is treating campus media trying to cover the SGA elections.
Patrick Decarlo, a founding member of Students for a Democratic Society, sent us this e-mail, after hearing about tuition paying student reporters from KnightNews.com being ordered to a small “Free Press Zone” of sorts, forbidden to interview anyone on the other side of the sidewalk, while countless other SGA campaigners passed out fliers and aggressively asked almost every student to vote.
KnightNews.com was told UCF Police would be called if the reporters conducted interviews on the other side of the sidewalk. We are currently working on a new section of KnightNews.com called Our Fight for Free Speech, if this situation is not resolved soon.
An e-mail sent to UCF Assistant Vice President of News and Information Grant Heston, UCF Police Chief Richard Beary, UCF General Counsel and Vice President Scott Cole, among others, Monday afternoon politely asking for help resolving the issue was completely ignored by all parties as of early Wednesday morning.
KnightNews.com will announce its plans to deal with this situation within the next few hours.
Hello:
I’m one of the founding members of SDS at UCF, and while I’m no longer enrolled in the school and have moved on to a professional life in South Florida, I still get riled up about UCF’s free speech policy. If needed, I could be a good resource for you all in tracking the history of the movement at UCF. A few years ago, I felt that the history of the free speech movement should have some sort of venue to exist, and below you will see something I wrote for a pamphlet detailing the history of UCF’s free speech movement. I’d love to talk to you all and help you anyway I can. Hope all is well.
Regards,
Patrick DeCarlo
The First Wave: UCF’s First Confrontation with Free Expression Activists
On February 22, 2002 members of UCF Liberty Knights, the Orange and Seminole County Libertarian Party, and members of the Progressive Council allegedly stood a few yards away from the one “free assembly zone” afforded to students at UCF, a zone which had been vaguely drawn by UCF’s Golden Rule. The students were peaceably assembled, holding signs and leafleting about UCF’s free expression policy when they were approached by campus police. A police officer threatened a citation of trespassing and threatened arrest because he alleged that the students were not in the “free assembly zone.” The students then dispersed. (Central Florida Future, 4/17/02)
In response, members of the Progressive Council wrote a bill clamoring for an expansion of the zones and President Hitt, in April 2002, agreed to form a committee to investigate the issue. This committee, comprised of ten people appointed by the administration, recommended expanding the “free assembly zones” to three additional areas on campus. UCF’s student paper, The Central Florida Future reported: “Students in the past, who have had an option to stop and listen to speakers in the free assembly zone or avoid them by taking alternate routes to class, will now have to make more of an effort to either find or evade assemblers.” (Central Florida Future, 6/25/03)
The issue of “find[ing]” and “avoid[ing]” assemblers is all too telling in the ensuing battles for free expression at UCF. Those who combat UCF’s free expression policy allege that the zones do not respect the rights afforded by “time, place, and manner” restrictions because they do not afford “equal opportunities for expression.” If you cannot “find” peaceable expression because the zones are not located in an area of maximum pedestrian traffic then they obviously serve the purpose of hiding unwanted speech.
With this argument in mind, a student-backed proposal to include all outdoor areas except walkways, traffic areas and building entrances was passed 10-1 through the Golden Rule Review Committee. This committee is one of the few channels by which UCF students can democratically recommend change. The proposal was rejected by Tom Huddleston, UCF’s vice president for Student Development and Enrollment Services, and the free speech fight simmered down because it appeared that all democratic avenues for change had been exhausted. (Central Florida Future, 6/25/03)
A New Group, the Same Story
Four years later the fight was reawakened. On March 20, 2006 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Campus Peace Action held an anti-war rally outside the Student Union. Though the participants did not interrupt the flow of traffic or infringe on any passer-bys rights, the campus police threatened another citation of trespassing unless the students be confined to a “free assembly zone.” The students then dispersed. (Our records.)
As was the case in February 2002, the students thought they were in a “free assembly zone” because the area they stood in was a popular site for tabling student organizations and guest vendors. And again, a chance for public forum was interrupted by armed police officers who threatened arrest to students for trespassing on the campus they paid to attend.
The same scenario of intimidation would unfold less than a month later in the John T. Washington Center. On April 19, 2006 SDS members held a non-confrontational awareness event about the potential of a nuclear attack on Iran. Participants spread out along the breadth of the Breezeway, sitting on unclaimed benches and never approaching passers-by—participants simply held signs which read “Ask me about Iran.” The event was not noisy and never equated to an assembly of people as all participants were spread out along a walkway of approximately 500 feet.
An hour into the event, university officials told the participants to leave because they were not in a “free assembly zone” and they did not have the right to engage in speech because it was an area reserved for advertisers and vendors. Campus police were called again and more threats of arrest for trespassing ensued. The participants dispersed.
Scott Eberle, Retail Coordinator for the John T. Washington Center, later insinuated that a reason the campus police were called was because SDS members allegedly obstructed the view of a Coca-Cola sign. In two cases, the episodes in March and April 2006, UCF policy privileged commercial speech over exercises of student speech. In July 2006, SDS gained the endorsement of the Central Florida Future when they wrote: “Free speech zones restrict the freedoms of UCF students and are not necessary for the protection of UCF students.”
This event also prompted SDS to hold an official grievance against UCF’s free expression policy on June 5, 2006. Though SDS members wanted to take aim at the endorser of the Golden Rule—President Hitt—UCF administrators derailed this process and signed SDS up for a grievance with Officer Pellerin, the police officer who enforced UCF’s Golden Rule policy. It was a case that could never be won because Pellerin did not break any rules as he was simply following the orders of administration officials.
SDS did not win their grievance and were told to “introduce changes to the UCF Golden Rule” by “contact[ing] the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities and the Golden Rule Review Committee.” This decision was laughable considering that four years before a Golden Rule Review Committee proposal that SDS would have endorsed passed 10-1 and was rejected by the administration. The next phase of the free expression fight sought multiple avenues for tackling UCF’s policy. (Our records, see grievance materials and incident report)
Greater Support
The Fall 2006 semester saw SDS challenge UCF’s free expression policy with help from local and national groups and a more diverse student voice. This was due in part by SDS’s next direct action.
On September 7, 2006 UCF did not break up SDS’s “free expression talk-in.” The participants repeated the tactics of their previous event in the John T. Washington Center and changed the content from a discussion about U.S. foreign policy to UCF’s history of quashing expression. As the day stretched along it became apparent that the administration was in no mood to go down for breaking up an event about free expression, and it is interesting to note that Scott Eberle, Officer Pellerin, and William Merck observed the event and voiced no complaints.
This rang the last bell of hypocrisy in UCF’s history of constitutional abuses because it demonstrates that UCF picks and chooses when to enforce its rules. UCF uses the “free assembly zones” to regulate where unwanted speech can(not) be heard and this is in conflict with protections of content-neutrality in “time, place, and manner” restrictions.
SDS continued to speak out in two ways.
First, they enlisted the support of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a non-partisan group that seeks unfettered protection of First Amendment rights on college campuses. The group wrote to President Hitt that “‘free speech zones’ are unconstitutional, as the law does not support the transformation of public institutions of higher education into places where constitutional protections are the exception rather than the rule.”
Secondly, SDS enlisted the support of the students when seven SDS members ran for SGA Senate under the banner of the SDS position on free expression. All seven members were elected and their first order of business was passing a resolution 25-11 that “supports initiatives to abolish ‘free assembly areas’ on campus” because they are “unconstitutional,” they are “isolated, remote, unprotected from the elements, and do not afford ample opportunity to provide a public forum,” and they “create a chilling effect by creating an environment that is hostile to freedom of expression.”
The UCF administration is evaluating its policies and may make changes shortly because of this resolution.
With this, UCF is in the national spotlight because of its “free assembly zones.” Besides FIRE’s support, Paul Haridakis, an associate professor at Kent State University’s school of communication studies and an expert on First Amendment issues, claims in the Orlando Sentinel that zones like UCF’s “go too far” and have the potential to be “a mechanism for controlling expression.”
George Crossley, the Central Florida contact for the ACLU, decried the administration’s policies at the Student Senate and urged the passing of the resolution, and the Altamonte Springs law firm, Weston, Garrou, DeWitt & Walters, mirrors the same opinions as they awarded SDS the First Annual Freedom of Speech Activism Award.
Epilogue
Eric Eingold
On January 10, 2007, the University of Central Florida Police Department issued a citation for trespassing and threatened arrest to UCF student Eric Eingold and issued a Student Conduct Referral to two other UCF students, Patrick DeCarlo and Jeff Grim, for refusing to move to a “free assembly area” in front of the UCF Student Union, though the UCF Golden Rule clearly states that SDS members were in a free assembly area. The police officers were called to the Student Union by the Union management after members of the Central Florida Students for a Democratic Society refused to move when asked twice by Union Management after setting up “Free Store,” which SDS has done regularly over the last semester. Free Store is an event where students lay out old clothes, books, records, and even blenders today, in front of the Union to pass out to students for free. The Free Store has been widely successful, and donations from the UCF Student Body have become vital in keeping Free Store afloat. Every Wednesday in front of the Union, vendors from a variety of businesses reserve space, at a fee of $120 for the day to sell goods to students at UCF, and Free Store offers an alternative to the students at UCF to the marketplace the Student Union now is.
This morning was an unseasonably cold day and SDS decided to move to a location in the sunlight, instead of the usual spot in the shade. However, the new location, 10 feet closer to the entrance to the Student Union and across a sidewalk, was determined by the UCF Police a non-free assembly area. However, the UCF Golden Rule, the very document which determines what is and what isn’t a free assembly area, makes no such distinction, clearly stating in Section 16-F (b), “The brick mall area between the John T. Washington Center and the Student Union,” is a free assembly area, and the new location members of SDS moved to, is also paved with bricks. When the university police were told by members of SDS that they were in fact in a brick mall in front of the Student Union and between the John T. Washington Center, the officers sent the manager of the Student Union to look up the Student Union Guidelines, instead of the Golden Rule, which state “The free speech area nearest to the Student Union is situated as follows: the Brick Mall area between the John T. Washington Center and the Student Union as bounded on the West side by the Student Union loading dock and East by the colored sidewalk crossing the Brick Mall near the entrance to the Union.” SDS members later found out that those guidelines were written years before the new construction in front of the Union and the description given by the Union Guidelines were no longer existent as they had been reconstructed.
Regardless, after being given two warnings, the police were called and arrived twenty minutes later. They told SDS that they could move voluntarily or be forced to move. About 6 SDS’ers gathered in a huddle to decide what to do, and while others left, others stayed, and while they gave them ample chance to leave, they began to force students to make up their minds. I hadn’t decided what to do when they told me that I had taken too much time and was lead over to the side of the Student Union and away from the sizeable crowd that had gathered, many in disbelief that a student faced arrest for gathering in front of the Union. After the police were given garbage bags by the Union to gather our sizeable load of clothes to throw away if nobody claimed them, I began to draw attention to students who had gathered that police were confiscating clothes from a program who gives them out for free. The police then lead me away and while I was being led away, I shouted to my friends to take notice of what was happening to me and was warned that if I did not silence myself immediately, I would be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. A student who happened to have a camera on his person strayed a few steps behind us and was told by Officer Fonseca, that he was interfering with an investigation and if he did not stop taking photos he would have his camera confiscated. I was brought between four police automobiles, one K-9 unit, and after being informed of what was happening to me I began to ask questions and was eventually forced to sit down on the side of the road. After about 20 more minutes of this, I was told that I was being issued a citation for trespassing and a student conduct referral, which means I will have to go before a disciplinary panel and could face expulsion from the university.
The problem here is obvious. I was issued a citation for trespassing while being someplace the Golden Rule classifies as a free speech area, but the policy of the Student Union, a building built and paid for by student dollars, supercede that of the Golden Rule. It’s apparent that the university is deciding which rules it should enforce and which laws to ignore.
***The charges against Eric Eingold, Jeff Grim, and Patrick DeCarlo were later dropped after an investigation conducted by the university.
