(The Center Square) – A bill looking to assure free speech is upheld at campus in the University of Wisconsin system and Wisconsin Technical Colleges would carry a punishment of two academic years of frozen tuition if a school violates any of the requirements of the bill multiple times in a five-year period.
The UW system said that its largest issue with Senate Bill 498 is the potential financial penalties for not following the rules.
“We have a concern with SB 498 and it really centers around some of the penalties prescribed in the bill that we believe would adversely impact our universities financially,” UW Vice President for University Relations Chris Patton told the Senate Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges. “Freezing state funding to our universities that put our financially health potentially at risk and really compromise the very mission and the efforts that we’re all attempting to undertake.
Lawmakers, however, are looking to have important enforcement behind the bill rather than having the bill pass and be only aspirational.
“It’s not to punish any of our institutions,” said Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, R-Fox Crossing. “It’s to ensure that they’re following what’s already in the Bill of Rights.”
Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, cited several studies and surveys including a UW System survey showing that UW Madison students and students across the country felt less comfortable speaking out if they are conservative, a Foundation for Individual Rights in Education survey showing that 35% of UW-Madison students believe it’s acceptable to use violence to stop a speaker on campus and data from The College Fix showing that more than 99% of donations from UW system professors went to Democrats, not Republicans.
“That (FIRE) number is disturbing on its own but it’s clearly even more chilling in light of the recent political assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on a college campus,” Nedweski said. “When we accept the false premise that speech is equivalent to violence, we allow violence to replace speech as a means of debate.”
Nedweski also cited UW-Eau Claire professor José Felipe Alvergue for throwing a table of the College Republicans on its side and storming off.
The bill requires that the colleges not restrict free speech if the speaker is lawful or restict the time, place or manner of free speech on campus. The school cannot create a “free speech zone” and limit speech to that area, require a permit to limit expression or require a security fee be paid.
The school also cannot “sanction individuals or groups for discriminatory harassment unless the speech targets its victim on the basis of a protected class under law, and is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars a student from receiving equal access to educational opportunities or benefits,” the bill states.
There are exceptions for the permit and security but “if a permit is required, the permitting process and any security fee must be content and viewpoint neutral.”
