Students at the University of Maryland are receiving a valuable lesson about the welfare state and, specifically, the education dole that state officials provide institutions of higher learning. The students had scheduled a showing of a porn flick on campus as part of their studies on constitutional law. A Maryland state legislator threatened a cutoff of state funds to the university, which caused university officials to cancel the showing. Citing the First Amendment, the students are protesting by scheduling an unauthorized viewing of the film on campus.
The state’s threat to cut off funding is a classic case of, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Once a school goes on the dole, it is inevitably going to be subject to the control and dictates of the state. Once a college or university begins receiving state funds, there is no longer any possibility of its retaining its independence. Like most welfare recipients, university administrators inevitably become dependent on the dole, causing them to quickly comply with state orders that are accompanied by threats to terminate the dole for non-compliance.
That’s, in fact, why Hillsdale College in Michigan has long resisted taking any state funds whatsoever and why it prohibits its students from accepting state aid. To the chagrin of government officials, Hillsdale remains totally independent of government control and regulation.
The incident at the University of Maryland also reflects how state ownership of an educational institution can warp people’s concept of fundamental rights and liberties.
Ordinarily, freedom of speech does not entail the right to present or view a particular film anywhere one wants. Instead, it entails the right to present or view the film on your own property, not on the property of someone else.
As the owner of the institution, the University of Maryland would ordinarily have the right to dictate what films are presented on its campus. If students don’t like the policies or decisions of university administrators, the students have the right to quit and go elsewhere. The First Amendment does not give them the right to present or view the film on property that does not belong to them.
Thus, ordinarily free-speech rights are rooted in private-property rights. The owner decides what will be spoken, written, or presented on his own property. If someone else doesn’t like it, he’s free to go elsewhere. A customer has no right to override the decisions of an owner.
Thus, so-called free-speech rights are fairly easy to reconcile in a private-property, free-market order. The owner decides, and the customer is free to go elsewhere. The problems occur whenever public, or government-owned, property is concerned.
There is a significant difference between government property and private property: the Bill of Rights, which operates as a restriction on government owners but not on private owners. Thus, while private individuals have the right to do whatever they want on their own property, including watching porn flicks, the government is expressly prohibited by the First Amendment (and Fourteenth Amendment) from interfering with free speech.
Since the University of Maryland is a government-owned institution, its actions are restricted by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Thus, as a government-owned institution, it might well be constitutionally precluded from prohibiting the showing of the porn flick. The issue will turn on whether some court determines whether the porn flick constitutes “legitimate” free speech, a determination that is made, of course, after the court views the film.
The ideal, of course, is a total separation of education and the state, where all colleges and universities are privately owned and privately funded, with the state playing no role in the process whatsoever. In such a case, each college and university would be free to run its affairs the way as it saw fit. If students didn’t like a school’s policies, they would be free to search for a college or university that better suited their preferences.