Illinois

Unbelievable.

The University of Illinois is grappling with the effects of a state law passed five years ago that was designed to keep state employees from campaigning for candidates on state time. In doing so, they have created quite an uproar among faculty and staff.

The university's administration has sparked outrage by telling faculty, staff and graduate students that a 5-year-old state law designed to prevent state workers from campaigning for candidates on state time or with state resources meant they could not express support for candidates or parties through pins, T-shirts or bumper stickers while on campus. Nor could they attend any political rally or event on campus, the administration said.

"They're trying to control our bodies and our voices any time we're on campus. These policies are clearly a violation of our 1st Amendment rights," said Dan Colson, an English graduate student who, along with other students, professors and free-speech experts, has lashed out.

Colson and others argue the University of Illinois was unfairly expanding state law and that academic freedom meant campus communities should not be held to the same standards as other state employees.

Unfortunately for Colson and civic-minded Americans across the state, the state took things a bit further.

But the governor's Office of Executive Inspector General, which investigates ethical violations, said it would act on complaints of political activity on college campuses depending on their severity.

And it delivered a sweeping twist, saying the state law meant that university students, not just employees, were prohibited from participating in political rallies on campus—an assertion at odds with the University of Illinois' interpretation of the law.

"Anything that benefits a political campaign is prohibited on state property," said Gilbert Jimenez, deputy inspector general. The results of any investigations of campus activity would be turned over the university's board of trustees with recommendations for discipline, including possible dismissal, Jimenez said.

Is Mr. Jimenez serious? Any activity on a college campus -- including that activity led by students -- is prohibited?

A trip to the University of Illinois website after reading about this has left me puzzled. This is from their "institutional commitment" to public engagement page:

"The term "public engagement" reflects the reality that so much of what we do takes the form of faculty members collaborating with communities, agencies, and organizations to address critical issues..." Chancellor Richard Herman, September, 2004

Chancellor Herman said this, wrote this, whatever, and then set up a task force studying civic engagement activities on campus. An excerpt from a university press release:

Chancellor Richard Herman appointed the task force in January and asked it to create a sharpened and sustained curricular and co-curricular emphasis on advancing the public good. The 26-member group, which includes representatives from campus units ranging from the department of architecture to WILL-AM/FM/TV as well as the University YMCA and Urban League of Champaign County, plans to strengthen connections between the campus and its communities, from the local to the global levels.

The effort is part of Herman’s Strategic Plan for the Urbana campus, an initiative to “establish Illinois as the leading public research institution that engages students in civic commitment and community-based learning experiences,” to help students meet the challenges of modern citizenship and address the most pressing societal problems.

The task force is leading a campuswide effort to identify the many existing dimensions of civic engagement, to help define it for the Urbana campus, encourage innovative thinking about it and make civic commitment more prominent in campus life and the identity of the institution.

So fine, the U of I is committed to civic engagement, or at least trying to find out what it means to them. But it's no wonder that only 16% of Millennials know what "civic engagement" means when they're getting mixed messages like this. U of I wants to "[engage] students in civic commitment," but its students aren't allowed to practice politics at its most fundamental level? In his article "Putting Politics Back Into Civic Engagement," in the Campus Compact Reader (Special Ed. 2003), Harry Boyte, the co-director of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs's Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota, hits the nail on the head: "We need to put politics back into civic engagement in higher education if we are to open up and democratize the ways in which knowledge is produced, diffused, and adopted. This is key to democratic change of every kind in the 21st Century."

Boyte, of course, is right. Higher education and civic engagement are and should always be closely linked. But let's remember that the scapegoat here should be the state of Illinois. The policy currently on the books is no doubt faulty enough to warrant a revision. Fine, perhaps the intent of the policy -- to keep state employees from participating in political activity on state time while working -- is logical. But when a professor or staff member, not working and on their own time, walks across campus and is not allowed to voice his opinion on political issues, that not only proves that the law is too broad; it becomes unamerican. Mr. Jimenez, the deputy inspector general, is apparently victim to a civics-deprived education. The law clearly has First Amendment issues on its own, but then Mr. Jimenez comes along and broadens the scope -- students are not even allowed to express their beliefs.

This law absolutely needs to be changed. We don't need students coming from Illinois who are as civically ignorant as Mr. Jimenez and its state legislature.

And I'm hoping U of I proves the words on their website aren't merely there to keep up with other institutions who are committed to civic engagement. It can do this by aggressively lobbying for a revision of the law.

Here's another write-up at The Chronicle of Higher Education in case you're interested.