FARMINGTON – More than 75 students, faculty members and interested residents attended a public forum at the University of Maine at Farmington Wednesday evening, in observance of Constitution Day.
Associate Professor Jim Melcher, who is the advisor for the new pre-law program at UMF, hosted the forum. Melcher and two local attorneys, Paul Mills of Mills & Mills and Walter Hanstein of Joyce, David & Hanstein, took the audience through four Supreme Court decisions on free speech.
“In some ways,” Executive Assistant Valerie Huebner said in the introduction, “this is a promise kept. Last spring President [Theodora] Kalikow did say we would be speaking about free speech more.”
Huebner referred to a controversy that erupted after a student affixed miniature American flags to the floor of the UMF Olsen Student Center, as an experiment to see if students would walk on or around them. At the time, Kalikow had stated the importance of future debate on free speech and the bounds of free speech.
The four cases discussed included Morse v. Frederick, perhaps better known as the “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” case. A student at a high school, while watching the passing of the torch at the Winter Olympic Games, created and displayed a banner with the now-famous slogan written on the front. The student was caught by the principal and suspended. The case dealt with the amount of power that school authorities had over their students, and where that power can apply. The court upheld the principal’s actions by dismissing a civil suit filed against her by the student.
The judges offered a variety of different reasons for their decisions, which was discussed at the forum.
“One of the things that’s wonderful about having nine justices,” Mills noted, “is that you get a variety of opinions.”
The second case dealt with an attempt by FAIR (Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights), a group of law schools, which unsuccessfully tried to ban military recruiting on their campuses, on the basis that the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” policy is discriminatory. The court unanimously said that a congressional law passed which forced schools to allow the military to recruit or risk their federal funding, did not constitute a case of “compelled speech.”
The third case was Hill v. Colorado, where a state law forcing protesters of abortion to stand at least eight feet away from those entering clinics was upheld. The fourth was FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, where comedian George Carlin’s famous “Filthy Words” sketch, featuring the seven words you can’t say on TV, was broadcasted on a radio station at 2 p.m.
“To me,” Hanstein said, “this would be a lot freer of a country if people could learn to just avert their eyes.”
Melcher intends to hold public forums in future, as the pre-law program develops at UMF. Those interested in the program can email him here.
