 "Photo: Daily Texan File Photo")
First, setting up is a problem.
Justice For All president Jeremy Alder talks with UT officials about a letter implying that only students can man the exhibit. But that's resolved. Then, an assistant dean of students says the display can't contain Web sites for off-campus organizations, and neither can the fliers. Tension builds. A few shouts ring in the February air as the first angry protesters show up.
Finally, the scene explodes. A crowd is screaming and chanting around JFA's towering posters of aborted fetuses, and UT Police officers rush in to grab a bullhorn, English professor Mia Carter gets hit, and everybody's yelling, "Free speech! Free speech!"
Demonstrations for and against abortion broke into civil unrest the week of Feb. 19, 2001, outside Gregory Gym. The scene replays on a videotape entered as evidence in JFA's federal lawsuit against the University. The camera follows JFA members and points where they direct it. In the JFA case, as with the abortion debate, truth depends on point of view.
Unlike the abortion debate, the JFA incident offers no easy divide. It started as anti-abortion versus administration and progressed to anti-abortion versus abortion rights, the abortion rights versus police, and finally, students versus the administrative rules that caused so much confusion on that day in February.
Opponents at the February incidents, both JFA and Action for Abortion Rights, supported student-written changes to the UT speech policies in October 2001. Now, those rules have changed. It doesn't matter, as JFA's lawyers argued in court Friday that the group was denied its constitutional rights.
But within four weeks of the filing of JFA's lawsuit, the Task Force on Assembly and Expression had addressed most of the group's original contentions - prior approval for student speech, vague bans on solicitation, restrictions on speech co-sponsored by off-campus groups and leniency toward hecklers - and suggested solutions.
A U.S. district judge did not grant preliminary injunctions requested by lawyers from the conservative Alliance Defense Fund representing JFA.
To no avail, JFA asked the court in February to declare the old free speech policies unconstitutional so the University would not reinstate them. Judging from Friday's hearing, JFA's arguments have been whittled down significantly.
Joshua Carden, a lawyer with the defense fund, argued that by being kept off the Main Mall and required to identify itself on its literature, the group's rights were violated.
"It's mostly obsolete," UT law professor Doug Laycock said of the lawsuit. Laycock led the free speech task force. "They might have had something if they had sued right away, but they didn't."
Two points
JFA first applied to set up its 2001 display on the Main Mall. That application was denied twice in February 2001, with the following reasons: "amplified sound not allowed in this area at designated time," and, "inappropriate place for exhibit," according to court filings.
Affidavits from UT President Larry Faulkner and James Vick, vice president for student affairs, cite the mall's aesthetics as necessary for the University to observe during business hours.
So when about 2,500 students protesting war in Iraq gathered on the Main Mall during business hours with a sound system and tents pitched by the flagpoles, JFA lawyers saw it as official approval. The point rarely emerged at Friday's hearing, but JFA court filings compare the group's exclusion from the Main Mall to the Feb. 12 anti-war rally.
Yet, Teresa Graham Brett, dean of students, called the entire rally "unauthorized." She said in an affidavit that she and her staff were out of the office when UTPD filed an incident report about the tents. Upon returning, her staff tried to persuade the demonstrators to leave, she said. Faulkner's affidavit also says he ordered the tents removed.
Finally, two students received written reprimands for putting up tents. Two others were also written up for using the sound system. One was put on probation for doing both, according to court filings.
JFA also was the victim of content-based censorship, Carden argued. The University prohibited a flier that read simply, "Life is beautiful - choose life," based on a demand that student organizations identify themselves on their literature
"Each time the plaintiffs have tried to set up their exhibit, there's been a new bar raised," Carden said.
Cheryl Woods of the dean of students office said in her affidavit she didn't know of another organization that had challenged that rule as too restrictive.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew W. Austin, who listened to JFA's motions, said he will allow 10 days for JFA and the University to submit more arguments. Austin will make a recommendation to a district judge about what should happen with the case.
Debate continues
The task force report acknowledged its broad revisions to campus free speech policy were a response to the JFA incident. Faulkner said the questions it addressed evolved over time, but with JFA, "the one incident did involve a confluence of questions."
JFA was marked for conflict. In January 2002, hecklers shouted down one of its guest speakers on the West Mall. Last spring, demonstrators surrounded the exhibit again. Others have stepped up. The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform sought permission in fall 2002 to fly pictures of fetuses over Darrel K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.
"Justice For All was given a pretty hard time on your campus, and we want to send a message to the administration," the center's director told the Texan.
This fall, UTPD asked anti-abortion demonstrators from off campus to take their literature and pictures of aborted fetuses off the South Mall.
Such groups as the International Socialist Organization and Planned Parenthood, along with UT professors Dana Cloud and Robert Jensen, who both were vocal at the JFA protests, will hold an abortion rights rally at 11:30 a.m. today on the West Mall.
Rewound
While clearly favorable to JFA, the videotape shows some inconsistencies that student groups - and later, the task force - found in campus speech policies. In one sequence, Kevin Rome, an assistant dean of students who has since left the University, investigates whether JFA literature gives prohibited contact information for off-campus groups. He asks to see a brochure before it is handed out. Then, he watches carefully as a JFA representative tears out pages that bear offending references.
"We don't censor publications for our students," Rome tells JFA. "We just ask that you comply with our rules."
Minutes later, he asks to review the changes to the brochure.
But the taped conduct of administrators generally seems watchful, not biased. UTPD tells a woman to remove her abortion rights signs from the short fence around the group's display. Later, of course, police wrest control of a bullhorn from the grip of a furious abortion rights crowd.
A man asks Wood, of the dean of students office, why the national JFA's traveling exhibit is on campus. She responds, "Student organizations are allowed to contract with off-campus groups to use their facilities. This is something that they have contracted to utilize on our campus for this display."
One exchange is prescient. Group members have just finished telling Rome that the International Socialist Organization is distributing literature nearby with contact information for a Chicago affiliate. According to the tape and to later court filings, Rome did nothing to stop that distribution. On camera, he says he's already aware of a problem with the socialist group.
"We deal with them probably much more frequently than we have been dealing with you guys," Rome tells Alder.
Alder responds, "It's only just begun with us."
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