Students win settlement against college for censoring their speech illegally
One of the posters that Clovis Community College officials agreed to
“gladly” remove because it made some students “very uncomfortable.”
Bring a gun to a knife fight: Back in November 2021 three students at Clovis Community College who were also members of the college club for Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) got permission to put up posters on campus showing in detail the historic and documented horrors of communist rule worldwide. The picture to the right shows one such poster.
Soon thereafter some people supposedly complained that the posters made them “uncomfortable.” Despite the fact that everything in the posters is factually true, the then college president Lori Bennett ordered the posters torn down, claiming she did it because they weren’t specifically a “club announcement.
In August 2022 the students sued [pdf] with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), noting that Bennett’s policy was not only inconsistent and arbitrarily, it was mostly used to block conservative political statements college administrators did not like.
The students have now won a settlement in court.
The State Center Community College District agreed to pay $330,000, adopt a new posting policy and “provide annual documented First Amendment training to all managers,” the first of which in December must be done by “qualified outside counsel,” the settlement agreement says.
It must show the training materials to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represents the students and Young Americans for Freedom chapter at Clovis Community College who sued the school and district, and “certify to FIRE the number of people that attended” the 2024 and 2025 trainings.
The payment is broken down into $250,000 in attorney’s fees for FIRE and $20,000 each for individual plaintiffs – Daniel and Alejandro Flores, Juliette Colunga and the YAF chapter.
The original suit did not sue the college or the district, but instead targeted directly President Bennett, Vice President of Student Services Marco De La Garza, Dean of Student Services Gurdeep Sihota Hebert, and Senior Student Services Program Specialist Patrick Stumpf for their actions to squelch the first amendment rights of these students. Apparently the college district stepped in and offered this settlement in order to protect its employees from direct personal liability, and the students, YAF, and FIRE agreed.
Though most of these college administrators appear to have personally gotten away with their thugish actions, Bennett was forced to retire in April 2022, and her illegal poster policy was shut down soon thereafter, right after the lawsuit was filed. The settlement will now force those still employed by the college to undergo the proper training on the Bill of Rights and what it means to be an American that you would expect every person working at a college would have learned in elementary school.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
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2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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One of the posters that Clovis Community College officials agreed to
“gladly” remove because it made some students “very uncomfortable.”
Bring a gun to a knife fight: Back in November 2021 three students at Clovis Community College who were also members of the college club for Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) got permission to put up posters on campus showing in detail the historic and documented horrors of communist rule worldwide. The picture to the right shows one such poster.
Soon thereafter some people supposedly complained that the posters made them “uncomfortable.” Despite the fact that everything in the posters is factually true, the then college president Lori Bennett ordered the posters torn down, claiming she did it because they weren’t specifically a “club announcement.
In August 2022 the students sued [pdf] with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), noting that Bennett’s policy was not only inconsistent and arbitrarily, it was mostly used to block conservative political statements college administrators did not like.
The students have now won a settlement in court.
The State Center Community College District agreed to pay $330,000, adopt a new posting policy and “provide annual documented First Amendment training to all managers,” the first of which in December must be done by “qualified outside counsel,” the settlement agreement says.
It must show the training materials to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represents the students and Young Americans for Freedom chapter at Clovis Community College who sued the school and district, and “certify to FIRE the number of people that attended” the 2024 and 2025 trainings.
The payment is broken down into $250,000 in attorney’s fees for FIRE and $20,000 each for individual plaintiffs – Daniel and Alejandro Flores, Juliette Colunga and the YAF chapter.
The original suit did not sue the college or the district, but instead targeted directly President Bennett, Vice President of Student Services Marco De La Garza, Dean of Student Services Gurdeep Sihota Hebert, and Senior Student Services Program Specialist Patrick Stumpf for their actions to squelch the first amendment rights of these students. Apparently the college district stepped in and offered this settlement in order to protect its employees from direct personal liability, and the students, YAF, and FIRE agreed.
Though most of these college administrators appear to have personally gotten away with their thugish actions, Bennett was forced to retire in April 2022, and her illegal poster policy was shut down soon thereafter, right after the lawsuit was filed. The settlement will now force those still employed by the college to undergo the proper training on the Bill of Rights and what it means to be an American that you would expect every person working at a college would have learned in elementary school.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Related:
2024 SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED IN 2016
“Remember, it was actually Bernie Sanders (Communist), who had the backing of a significant segment of the Democrat oriented public and the people throughout the year. But Bernie Sanders is a self-professed Communist and would never have prevailed against Trump in 2016. Bernie Sanders had to stand down.”
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/2024-should-have-happened-in-2016
YAF should follow up with monthly screenings of THE KILLING FIELDS on campus.
Then again, you start to wonder if some of the tankies in the campus Antifa club wouldn’t view the whole thing as an instruction manual….
Almost 3 years is way too long.
While such small victories are to be savored, meanwhile “our” lovely government continues its Stasi-like surveillance of Americans deemed to be a “threat” to the Biden Administration, including former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
https://www.racket.news/p/american-stasi-tulsi-gabbard-confirms?publication_id=1042&post_id=147403238&isFreemail=true&r=288zcz&triedRedirect=truehttps://www.racket.news/p/american-stasi-tulsi-gabbard-confirms?publication_id=1042&post_id=147403238&isFreemail=true&r=288zcz&triedRedirect=true
This, along with Justice Department-directed lawfare and the weaponization of the FBI and IRS pretty much represents that complete overthrow of any semblance of the Constitution and the Rule of Law in this country, but who’s complaining? Indeed, the Ho Harris – Tim Walz ticket promises us MORE of this sort of thing, and we better well LIKE it if we know what’s good for us.
As a postscript, here is a commentary on Mr. Taibbi’s piece which pretty well sums things up:
“Obama (and Holder, etc.) took the surveillance apparatus created by Bush and Cheney via the Patriot Act and re-trained it on their domestic political opposition. The Democrats are straight up fascists at this point — colluding with private corporations to suppress political dissent; attempting to bankrupt, imprison and (I strongly suspect) assassinate the leading candidate of the opposing party; unconstitutionally holding political protesters in jail without trial for years on end; and on and on.”
Exactly. Be careful what you wish for, and think about what happens to the tools that you create when other people get their hands on them.
I’m sure those leftists will apply their NEW KNOWLEDGE in a positive way! Training someone is not CHANGING someone! People will watch videos, listen to speakers, read materials, take a quiz, and leave the room with the SAME IDEOLOGY and INTENTS! I know from my experience of “training” that you SAY something to PASS. It’s putting people ON NOTICE or ON UNEMPLOYMENT that gets attention and change! Let me clarify “my training” – it was so our Company could get better scores on an OPINION poll – had nothing to do with reality!
NOW the emphasis should be on RESULTS and ACTIONS of those who are “educated”! Did the new proposal list what happens should you FAIL to exercise compliance? Who decides if you violate a CONSERVATIVE’S RIGHTS? Did the school discipline or eliminate any opposing HATE groups who posted FALSE or FAKE accusations? Yeah!
I hope their required training links the Declaration of Independence to the Bill of Rights. “Long train of abuses” and such, followed by “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends…”.
Also, they should have wrangled for a Second Amendment class in there, too.
Has anybody challenged this whole surveillance state thing on the basis of the rarely used 3rd amendment?
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-3/
One of the big objections to letting the military into your house was the practical loss of privacy and the obvious monitoring. But maybe will all give consent when we click yes as we use our cell phones and laptops on first boot after purchase. Implied consent due to shrink wrap license.
The brilliance of our Founding Fathers. The Constitution is more applicable today than ever.
James Street:
BINGO!
The Founding Fathers knew exactly what they were up against although they could not imagine for one second the level of technological control, manipulation, subversion of society and potential to abuse power that exists today.
And STILLLL they had it covered.
Amazes me every time.
Related, its all related:
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/on-stolen-valor-1
I suggest everyone keep a close eye on the upcoming Democrat National Convention.
2024 SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED IN 2016 (sigma3ioc.com)