[Peace-discuss] U of I ethics says employees cannot wear political buttons

[E. Wayne Johnson]

There is a discussion of this going on at IlliniPundit that you might 
want to review (or not).

http://illinipundit.com/2008/09/24/ui-stifles-employees

Of course there are some radical McCainFascist neocons like "Glock21" 
who think that it's great but I perceive it as
horrific, considering that this is an Educational Institution creating 
culture and it's here in my front yard.

I put in a call to the ACLU about it this morning but was told that no 
one was
available to take my call until the afternoon or tomorrow.  I called the 
University and got the
run around to the ethics office in  Springfield 866.758.2146 where I 
voiced my complaint.

The ACLU contact office in Chicago is 312-201-9740.

Karen Medina wrote:
> [Evidently, the U of I ethics office says U of I employees cannot not wear political 
> buttons on campus or feature bumper stickers on cars parked in campus lots.
> From http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/24/buttons -kem]
>
> Sporting an Obama or McCain button? Driving a car with one of the campaigns’ 
> bumper stickers? You might need to be careful on University of Illinois 
> campuses.
>
> The university system’s ethics office sent a notice to all employees, including 
> faculty members, telling them that they could not wear political buttons on 
> campus or feature bumper stickers on cars parked in campus lots unless the 
> messages on those buttons and stickers were strictly nonpartisan. In addition, 
> professors were told that they could not attend political rallies on campuses if 
> those rallies express support for a candidate or political party.
>
> Faculty leaders were stunned by the directives. Some wrote to the ethics office 
> to ask if the message was intended to apply to professors; they were told that it 
> was. At Illinois campuses, as elsewhere, many professors do demonstrate their 
> political convictions on buttons, bumper stickers and the like.
>
> Cary Nelson, a professor at the Urbana-Champaign campus and national 
> president of the American Association of University Professors, said that he 
> believes he is now violating campus policy when he drives to work because he 
> has a bumper sticker that proclaims: “MY SAMOYED IS A DEMOCRAT.”
>
> Mike Lillich, a spokesman for the university system, said that President Joseph 
> White was asked about the ethics memo this week and that he understands why 
> faculty members are concerned. “The campus traditions of free speech are very 
> different from the DMV,” said Lillich.
>
> White told professors that he thinks “this is resolvable,” and that they should 
> use “common sense.” But for now, Lillich said of the policy sent to all 
> employees, “officially, it does apply.”
>
> Nelson and other professors are circulating a draft statement outlining their 
> objections to the ethics rules. “Although these rules are not at present being 
> enforced, the AAUP deplores their chilling effect on speech, their interference 
> with the educational process, and their implicit castigation of normal practice 
> during political campaigns,” the draft says.
>
> It adds: “The Ethics Office has failed to recognize and accurately define both the 
> special context of a university and the role of its faculty members. Campus 
> education requires that faculty and students have comparable freedom of 
> expression on political subjects. This applies not only to obvious contexts like 
> courses on politics and public policy in a variety of departments but also to the 
> less formal settings in which faculty and students interact.... As the rules stand, 
> students can exercise their constitutional rights and attend rallies and wear 
> buttons advocating candidates, but faculty cannot.... [S]tudents might attend 
> campus rallies and later analyze them in a classroom. Are faculty members to 
> have no experience of the rallies themselves? Finally, it is inappropriate to 
> suggest that faculty members function as employees whenever they are on 
> campus. Faculty often move back and forth between employee responsibilities 
> and personal acts within the same time frame.”
>
> Debate over the appropriate limits for political activity on campus is nothing 
> new, of course. Most controversies involve actions that could be viewed as 
> aligning an institution with a candidate. For instance, this week, the University of 
> Massachusetts at Amherst called off a chaplain’s efforts to recruit students to 
> work for the Obama campaign and to get credit for the experience. But while 
> such disputes come up every election year, they tend not to involve the bumper 
> stickers on professors’ cars or the buttons on their lapels.
>
> The American Council on Education publishes guidance each election season on 
> the latest legal standards about political activity and higher education. For 
> instance, the council recommends that colleges not engage in activities such as 
> endorsing candidates, placing signs on behalf of candidates on university 
> property, or reimbursing university employees for contributions to specific 
> candidates. Such actions could imply an endorsement by the institution, the 
> guidance notes. With regard to activity by individual faculty members and 
> administrators, the council said that it was important to avoid actions that 
> “would be perceived as support or endorsement by the institution.”
>
> Ada Meloy, general counsel at the American Council on Education, said that the 
> guidelines published by the ACE focus on Internal Revenue Service requirements 
> for tax-exempt organizations. While she saw nothing there that would limit a 
> professor’s right to wear a button or attend a rally, she said that Illinois statutes 
> may impose more limits.
>
> The norm for regulation of faculty members is to bar the use of institutional or 
> public funds or facilities on behalf of candidates, she said. One possibility, she 
> said, may be that Illinois is especially sensitive to these issues because Obama is 
> one of its senators.
>
> Lillich, the system spokesman, said he knew of no controversies over 
> inappropriate political activity that might have prompted the rules.
>   
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