STATEMENT OF SOLIDARITY WITH STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
by ORLANDO FOOD NOT BOMBS
Adopted Jan. 17, 2007
Orlando Food Not Bombs wishes to express its collective solidarity with the University of Central Florida chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and its members in their struggle to extend free speech and assembly rights to the entire campus. An injury to one or more of our comrades is an injury to all of us. We refuse to stand by silently and passively while the rights of our comrades in SDS are trampled upon by the UCF administration.
Orlando Food Not Bombs believes that public university campuses, as institutions dedicated to knowledge and inquiry, should be places where students, faculty members, employees and citizens have the unfettered right peacefully to express their political, social and religious views, individually and in groups, by speaking, by displaying signs and banners, distributing printed materials and through other means. These activities should not be restricted to small parts of the campus, the so-called free speech or free assembly zones created by the administration as a means of controlling students.
Individuals and groups should not have to fear that if they attempt to express their views on large parts of the campus that they may be subject to harassment and disciplinary proceedings by UCF administrators and trespass warnings and arrest by the UCF Police Department. Students should not have to seek permission from administrators or employees to exercise their free speech rights on campus. So-called rights that are contingent upon permission from authorities and that are limited by authorities are not rights at all. They are privileges, and as such can be taken away at the whim of those authorities, creating a climate that is antithetical to the concepts of autonomy and free and open debate.
That this situation exists is to the discredit of the UCF administration, including President John Hitt and Provost Terry Hickey, and mocks the highest ideals that institutions of higher education supposedly embody.
We call upon the UCF administration to do the following:
– to cease immediately any harassment of SDS and any attempts to hinder SDS members, individually and collectively, from exercising their First Amendment rights of free speech and free assembly to express their political views;
– to rescind immediately the trespass warning issued by the UCF police to UCF student and SDS member Eric Eingold on Jan. 10, 2007 during the SDS "Free Store" held on the lawn in front of the Student Union. We also call upon the administration to expunge any information about this incident from Eingold's student records;
–--and to end immediately its policy of segregating free speech activities, such as protests, demonstrations, and other types of assemblies, to small areas of the campus. The entire campus should be designated a free speech and assembly zone, where students and citizens can express themselves in ways consistent with their desires, goals and consciences, in the process learning and helping society move in a positive direction.
ARTICLES:
from the Orlando Sentinel: "UCF rules fuel debate on freedom of speech" (Dec. 17, 2006)
from New Left Notes blog: "Campus Repression at UCF Intensifies" (Jan. 12, 2007)
from the Orlando Weekly (Jan. 18, 2007)