The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights issued a letter to colleges and universities nationwide late last month clarifying its position on such institutions' ability to restrict students' speech.
The letter was intended to reverse a long-standing misconception that OCR regulations encouraged or even required schools to enact speech codes in order to guard against offensive speech.
"OCR's regulations should not be interpreted in ways that would lead to the suppression of protected speech on public or private campuses," OCR Asst. Secretary Gerald Reynolds said in the letter.
Beyond this nonspecific endorsement of first amendment rights, the OCR letter laid out its position in real terms, expressedly stating it did not require schools to institute speech codes.
"There was apparently some confusion that the OCR required schools to have speech codes," said OCR's Deputy Press Secretary Susan Asprey. "Nothing could be further from the truth. If colleges and universities decide to have speech codes it is not because the Office of Civil Rights requires them."
The dispatch was met with widespread approval from civil liberties watchdogs.
"Universities have been put on notice, as the letter says, that if they restrict speech they do so of their own accord and they will be held to accord for having done that," said Erich Wasserman, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. "This is the beginning of the end for speech codes."
University Law Prof. Robert O'Neil, author of "Free Speech in the College Community," said while he viewed the letter as a "welcome clarification" of the department's policy, it was not really a monumental alteration.
"I think the speech code movement is something that has come and gone," O'Neil said. "It's just not that central these days."
While FIRE staffers lauded the letter's suggestion that offensive language does not necessarily qualify as harassment worthy of restriction, O'Neil said he felt the OCR's position has not changed significantly.
"My recollection is that earlier OCR policies could never have previously been viewed as compelling or mandating sanctions against purely verbal harassment," O'Neil said.
The University has never implemented a speech code -- a fact which O'Neil attributes to the concept of student self governance it maintains.
"I've always been proud that this institution never adopted [a speech code] because any change in student conduct rules has to originate in the [University] Judiciary Committee," he said.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s there were several motions made within the University Judiciary Committee to enact an anti-harassment speech code within the University but none garnered sufficient support to warrant presentation to administrators, O'Neil said.
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