Resolved: PCUs ought not restrict any constitutionally protected speech.

I affirm; Resolved: Public colleges and universities in the United States ought not restrict any constitutionally protected speech. I accept my opponent's definitions. I have two observations: First, to win the round, the affirmative does not have to show that in every case the resolution is true, but rather that it should be true as in general. Nelson "08: "No question of values can be determined entirely true or false. This is why the resolution is desirable. Therefore neither debater should be held to a standard of absolute proof. No debater can realistically be expected to prove complete validity or invalidity of the resolution. The better debater is the one who, on the whole, proves his/her side of the resolution more valid as a general principle. " Second, we must look at public colleges and universities as government actors. Definitionally, they are. Calleros "95: "Administrators on state campuses are state actors and thus are subject to the negative directive of the First Amendment" The value is consequentialism, which is defined as the theory that the morality of an action should be judged based on its consequences. Prefer consequentialism because it treats people equally. All consequences are weighed on the same scale. Professor William Haines explains that morality is caring about people equally. That means trying to benefit people, so consequentialism is preferable. And, university officials are required to make choices with uncertain outcomes, but cannot look at the personal ethics of 50,000 students especially given that those beliefs often contradict. The only effective response is to base decisions off generalities and aggregate data to create the best policies for the most people. The criterion is achieving a goal, which is the best way to maximize good consequences. First, if something does not achieve its goal it"s effectively useless. Since society is specialized, even if something achieves an extraneous goal it"s still useless because other things exist to meet those goals. Second, useless things are drain resources and prevent us from using those resources to otherwise benefit society and achieve good consequences. Therefore, if something does not achieve its goal it harms society. Conversely, things are created to achieve goals to benefit society and only by achieving those goals do we have good consequences. Contention One: Colleges and universities Speech codes expressly limit people"s rights to free speech, which harms the marketplace of ideas. They also implicitly limit speech them through the chilling effect. Speech is chilled because of uncertainty as to what speech is or is not allowed. Majeed "09 explains that speech codes are vague, and students and administrators must guess how far they extend. Students are so fearful of violating the code that they self-censor. This prevents crucial discussion from taking place and ideas from being shared. Restricting speech confounds racism, precisely what those restrictions are trying to counter. Discretion in those who censor means that restrictions backfire. Strossen: "One ironic, even tragic, result of this discretion is that members of minority groups themselves-the very people whom the law is intended to protect-are likely targets of punishment. .. Rather than curbing speech offensive to minorities, this has been regularly used to curb the speech of blacks, trade unionists, and anti-nuclear activists. " A University of Michigan speech code demonstrates this: Students were only punished twice out of twenty speech code violations relevant to race, and both times the speech was by black students. Clearly, speech codes are counterproductive and do not achieve their goal. Only counterspeech and education solve in the long term. Restrictions do not counter ideas, whereas according to ACLU "17, "when hate is out in the open, people can see the problem. Then they can organize effectively to counter bad attitudes, possibly change them, and forge solidarity against the forces of intolerance. " Speech is not the problem; rather bigotry is. Restrictions only address the symptoms of an issue as opposed to the root cause. The way to address bigotry is through education. Raising awareness prevents it better than speech codes which are often ineffective and overly vague. Even if speech codes stop speech for a short period of time, the only long-term solution is to change ideas, not words, which can only be accomplished through counterspeech and education. Contention Two: Government entities The goal of the government is to protect constitutional rights. The Constitution is the highest law: "This Constitution. .. shall be the supreme law of the land. " Thus, government entities must protect all rights derived from it. Restricting constitutionally protected speech definitionally violates the Constitution. If it is allowable within the Constitution to restrict speech, it is not protected speech. Supreme Court decisions affirm the rights of students: they don"t "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. " --from Tinker v. Des Moine. Since the Supreme Court treats college students as normal citizens, government entities must protect students" rights to achieve their goals. Contention Three: Courts Because courts are part of the justice system, their goal is to achieve justice for as many people as possible. Courts are overbooked with cases in the status quo: Wall Street Journal author Joe Palazzolo "15 explains that we have over 330,000 cases waiting now in court, and delays last over three years. We have too many cases in our courts now. Blatantly unconstitutional speech codes go to court to be challenged, but if they weren"t implemented in the first place that would clear up room for more important cases, allowing the courts to achieve their goal by achieving justice for more people. For all the reasons stated above, please affirm. Thank you. On my opponent's case. . . First on framework debate: My opponent values justice because it is the duty of the government to provide justice. However, colleges have a unique duty to promote education over justice, and that is achieved better through my framework. Resisting structural violence has no link to either framework so ignore it. Their first contention suggests that tolerance of evil is bad. However, the way to counter it is with counterspeech, not speech codes. Their second contention states that hate speech leads to violence, but if this is the case it is inciting violence and not protected speech. Then they say counterspeech is ineffective but even if just a few people can engage in it it is helpful to stop hate and then more people can engage in it. Regardless, restrictions are worse than doing nothing. In their subpoint C, they define structural violence as any limitation of human needs. People need rights to free speech to be educated, thus restricting speech confounds structural violence and violates their own framework. On their counterplan/third contention: They mainly just cite harms to hate speech, but turn this: speech codes make hate speech worse--according to research from Northwestern restricting something makes people want to engage in it more. And turn: hate speech restrictions would be biased in implementation as I say in my Strossen card. They have no evidence that speech codes actually work. Stopping racist insults provides a ruse of solvency--we need to actually stop racism through counterspeech and education. But if you don't buy this, perm do the neg--racist insults threaten according to my opponent and thus are not protected. This is a double bind--if my opponent claims they do not threaten then the harms of restrictions outweigh the benefits of restricting speech that isn't that harmful. Perm do aff then neg--eliminating all restrictions then putting specific ones in place just makes sense. Finally, reject perm--do the neg if we can't do the aff.