I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
[COMMENTARY] Michigan State University is in the middle of a difficult community debate about the difference between free speech and hate speech. And more important, should hate speech be protected speech.
The university has had to confront this debate head-on because the MSU chapter of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) has sponsored talks by a series of highly controversial speakers. Further, the YAF chapter itself has been named as a hate group.
Administrators have stated they personally find the views of the YAF speakers offensive. Those speakers include Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado), a strong opponent of illegal immigration who is running for the Republican presidential nomination; Chris Simcox, head of the Minutemen Civilian Defense Corps, an anti-immigration group that runs vigilante border patrols; Ryan Sorba, who maintains that being born gay is a hoax; and Nick Griffin, a British politician who has denied that the Holocaust happened. But MSU officials also maintain that MSU should be a free marketplace of ideas and that even if ideas are racist, sexist or homophobic they are protected under the First Amendment.
Continued -The university also has the responsibility to ensure that everyone is safe in such contentious situations. This means, in many cases, the university has a responsibility to deploy security staff. And they have done so, with a great show of force, at each of the YAF-sponsored talks.
Here is where things get a little more troublesome for me. All of the security measures that have been implemented to secure the First Amendment rights of YAF’s speakers have been paid for by the university — which means by taxpayer funds. This is a result of a threat against the university by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Last March the conservative group wrote MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon to protest MSU’s attempt to have YAF pay for additional security for a planned showing of the Muslim-bashing film “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.”(http://www.thefire.o….) As a result of this letter, MSU dropped the requirement that YAF pay for security.
But while MSU does not charge YAF for event security, the university continues to charge other student groups to do so. In October the Alliance of Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgender, Intersex and Allied students of MSU hosted a Coming Out Day Dance at Kellogg Center. The alliance was required to pay for security. The university said that Kellogg Center, which is owned and operated by MSU, requires greencoat (non-police) security at any event. This raises the question: How can one part of the university have a policy requiring hiring security staff, while another part of the university does not?
The security measures for Simcox, who spoke at MSU last April and again Tuesday night at YAF’s invitation, were stunning. In April, MSU spent nearly $3,000 to rent metal detectors and had dozens of uniformed campus officers on duty at the event. MSU rented floodlights and portable generators and brought in police dogs to search the building prior to the event. These same measures were taken Tuesday.
While the question of whether such security is necessary can be debated, there is a more important question. Since April, I have repeatedly asked Michigan State University to make pubic how much money has been spent in security for YAF events.
MSU spokesman Terry Denbow has consistently said that he continues to ask for the information, but that it has not been forthcoming from the campus police. MSU police public information officer Florene McGlothian-Taylor directed me to file a Freedom of Information Act request. That request was denied, however, because in order to give me the specific amount spent on the Simcox talk in April, the university would have to create a document. The state’s FOIA law is clear that only already existing documents may be requested.
So here we are, seven months after the April event, and the public still does not know how much taxpayers spent to ensure Simcox’s free-speech rights. Now we have a second Simcox appearance, with the same heavy police protection, and no one can answer how much taxpayer money was spent on this event, either.
MSU is doing the right thing in protecting the First Amendment rights of speakers on campus. However, its continued failure to publicly account for the expenses is in violation of the spirit of public accountability, not to mention the law. Transparency is necessary when you are spending public dollars.
So the questions now are: When will MSU become transparent about security measures and costs associated with protecting the First Amendment rights of highly controversial speakers? And what if anything will it do about a student group that seems to court confrontation by bringing those speakers to campus and predicting that there will be violence?
It’s time for MSU to be accountable.
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