Safe Spaces On College Campuses

Recently, free speech on college campus has become a great controversy as the First Amendment is a right granted to every US citizen by the Constitution; this is an unalienable right that cannot be denied from an individual. Yet, the true inquiry is how much one can exercise their First Amendment right in college and what is considered a right. There have been many controversial speakers on college campuses because, on the one hand, it is safer to ban these speakers from spreading their hateful message that marginalizes people, but this arises another problem. By disregarding these contentious speakers, students are limited and censored to certain types of ideas or beliefs because they do not agree with the institutions’ ideas. This question

Cherminsky, for example, finds that safe spaces are helpful. He finds the campus administrators have the right to protect students and their safety, so the administrators can treat crude and hate speeches on campus as unacceptable. This means colleges have the right to cancel certain guest speakers to protect the students. Yet, the difficult part is identifying whether a college is cancelling a certain guest speaker to protect the students from riots that accompanies the guest speaker or because the guest speaker’s ideas do not align with the common majority. The difficult part about safe spaces is it protects students from ideas they do not agree with. Greg Haidt is against creating safe spaces on campus, however, because safe spaces lead to protecting students from certain ideas and beliefs that lead to poor professional lives and harm their mental state. Safe spaces are teaching students that they can respond to hate through their emotions and disregarding the matter, which teaches students the ability to be nurtured with hypersensitivity. In the article, “Freedom of Expression in the United States,” the government even finds that “allowing citizens to openly discuss topics of public concern results in a more transparent and representative government, more tolerant ideas, and a more stable society.” Having people who disagree with one another allows colleges and society to function as a whole because the differing opinions allow society to gain abilities to rebuttal instead of agreeing with one another. With having safe spaces, “a person cannot develop an independent point of view about the world unless he or she is exposed to different ideas about what is important and what beliefs are most meaningful and is permitted to converse with others about their experiences or beliefs” (Chemerinsky and Gillman