Monday, April 05, 2004

U.Md. Students Shout at Lynne Cheney

Drudge has this story up this morning, that three University of Maryland students face disciplinary action for "disrupting" a Lynne Cheney speech on campus back on February 29th ... one for shouting a question about gay marriage, one for shouting a question about slave reparations, and one for uttering a profanity in response to something Cheney said.

Apparently, there was no microphone provided for audience questions, so two of the students did the rude student thing of shouting their questions. For this rudeness, they face ... what? Expulsion? It's unclear what "disciplinary action" might entail.

But the Maryland ACLU has gotten involved on the students' behalf. The ACLU says that the university's action infringes on the students' right to free speech. "What the university officials appear to have done appears not only to be in violation of their own speech code, but also of the First Amendment," said Susan Goering, executive director of Maryland's ACLU.

If Lynne Cheney's smart, and no one ever said she wasn't, she'll send the same lawyer she sent to New American Library on over to the University of Maryland and recommend that the University just drop all this disciplinary stuff before it begins to get even further into the press as AN ISSUE.

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