The Truth About Ripon College’s Censorship of Conservative Students

YAF 9/11 never forget poster
Young America's Foundation
Tom Ciccotta

After a series of misleading reports on Ripon College’s alleged censorship of conservative activists, the truth is beginning to emerge.

Several reports about the censorship of conservative activists at Ripon College have made the rounds throughout conservative media over the past week. Imprecise language has led to confusion about what actually happened.

So what actually happened? An intentionally provocative poster that included violent images related to both 9/11 and other terrorist attacks faced pushback from Ripon College officials. Breitbart News wrote in the original report on this story that the poster was approved and posted around Ripon’s campus last year. The college even launched investigations after several of the posters were defaced.

This year, Ripon College responded to student complaints about the posters. “After receiving complaints from our students about the YAF Islamic extremism posters last year, College officials gave the Ripon College YAF student representatives suggestions as to how to have a discussion about 9/11 this year with our entire campus and community,” the college wrote on Twitter. These suggestions came from the College’s “Bias Protocol Board.”

A report from the Young America’s Foundation details some of the criticisms that Ripon College officials directed at the students who proposed the poster this year. “There is nothing that this poster, in particular, adds to the conversation about 9/11, or about the politics of terrorism, or about national security or responses to it that couldn’t be done easily and more constructively without it,” members of the Bias Protocol Board allegedly said.

“Some things [on the poster] don’t have anything to do with 9/11 — ISIS, for example,” another official allegedly said to the students. “I’m not sure I think the Iran hostage issue was Islamic terrorism,” another said.

Media coverage of the event was definitely responsible for the confusion surrounding the college’s actions. Take the August 30 article from the Washington Examiner. The misleading headline, which reads “Campus discourages Sept. 11 memorial citing ‘bias’ against Muslims,” implies that Ripon College had targeted the annual 9/11 flag memorial display that conservative student activists organize on campus.

The headline instantly led to a wide misunderstanding. The article’s decision to imply that the posters were part of the annual memorial project allowed both the Associated Press and Ripon College to argue that any claim of censorship was false. The Associated Press published a report claiming that Ripon College banned the 9/11 memorial. In fact, officials at the college called the flag display a “great example” of how conservative students engage the community.

Intentional provocation, of course, is not grounds for censorship. Even if this wasn’t a traditional case of censorship, the practice of allowing administrators on “bias protocol boards” to place pressure on students to modify their speech should be considered a form of speech restriction. Private colleges like Ripon College have an intellectual commitment to the principles of free expression.

If they want to retain the public’s respect, it is in their best interest to safeguard that principle.

 

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