> The act would bring disciplinary action against students and faculty members that who disrupt a guest speaker by protesting or staging a walkout.
It reads like a bad joke but this is what people vote for.
Although, I will say, when our public schools here allowed walkouts to protest ICE (high schools), I thought it was shameful. Who at the school gets to decide what causes are worthy of allowing the walkouts that people don't get punished for missing school? Which causes are OK for the teachers to push upon students, who decides that?
If I were a parent, I'd be upset that they put my kid in a position to either participate in the walkout or face pressure from other students for "disagreeing" with them or supporting ICE. That's an unfair position for a student to be in because the school is trying to push a particular agenda.
[T]he University's fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, [or] immoral… As a corollary to the University's commitment to protect and promote free expression, members of the University community must also act in conformity with the principle of free expression. Although members of the University community are free to criticize and contest the views expressed on campus, and to criticize and contest speakers who are invited to express their views on campus, they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe."
It's interesting which institutions or faculty groups have endorsed this or statements said to be substantially similar: https://fire.org/research-learn/chicago-statement-university...
Related debates here include the contrast between American support of more absolute freedom of speech and European support for broader limitations on speech (wehrhafte Demokratie, streitbare Demokratie), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_democracy and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
It really shouldn’t be permissible to blatantly misrepresent the content of a bill before the state Senate. There’s absolutely no carveout for racist speakers in the any draft of the bill that I can find.