Con Law 101
By Scott Meacham, Charlottesville, VA
Published on Wednesday, March 9, 2005
To the Editor:
Why would Trustee Rodgers state that "Dartmouth currently has imbedded in its own website a speech code that is clearly illegal under the First Amendment" when he admits in the same column that the First Amendment does not apply directly to a private college ("Encouraged But Not Convinced," March 7)? Congress is forbidden from doing dozens of things that a private corporation is not, so why the obsession with trying to apply this particular ban to Dartmouth? Whatever speech regulation one might infer from a couple of administrators' statements is worth criticizing on its own merits, but Rodgers' alarmist application of the First Amendment only confuses the issue. Doesn't free speech have value independent of whatever the federal government has done to restrain its own potential for harm, and shouldn't any claim of a violation of the principle of free speech be able to stand on its own two feet? And when are we going to get to talk about the real issues, like Dartmouth's unconsented quartering of soldiers in houses during peacetime?