Spotted any professors sporting Barack Obama T-shirts on campus recently? Know any staff members who proudly display John McCain bumper stickers on their cars? At the University of Illinois, such expressions of political opinion this campaign season might warrant disciplinary action.
The university's ethics office issued a memo late last month reminding its employees that, under state law, they should not engage in partisan political activities on campus. It specifically prohibited activities such as wearing a button endorsing a particular candidate or party while on university grounds.
The memo generated controversy on campus, with several faculty members and graduate student employees speaking out against the policy as an infringement upon their constitutional rights.
In response, B. Joseph White, president of the University of Illinois, released a statement on Monday that amended the restrictions set out in last month's memo. He stated that the university would permit employees to display partisan bumper stickers and wear partisan political buttons or attend rallies while they are not "on duty."
The controversy centered on the university administration's interpretation of a 2003 state law and the activities the law prohibits in order to avoid the use of state resources in partisan politics.
Nevertheless, university officials said the law will not be enforced by the university. "Enforcement of the law is the responsibility of the Office of the Inspector General for the state of Illinois," said Thomas Hardy, executive director of the university's media relations.
Cary Nelson, professor emeritus of English at the university's Urbana-Champaign campus and president of the American Association of University Professors, called some of the prohibitions set out in the memo "comical, or absurd."
Nelson issued a statement on Sept. 23 on behalf of the AAUP and reported himself to the school's ethics office for violating the law. He said a number of professors and graduate students also self-reported violations of the policy last Friday..
Although university officials maintained that they were only transmitting state law, Nelson said, "the position of the AAUP is that the ethics committee is adding to the law. That's inappropriate."
He also called the university's interpretation of the state policy unconstitutional. "The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of assembly, free speech," Nelson said. "These are things that enable our democracy to survive."
Nelson added that the policies endorsed by the university threaten academic freedom. Many departments, including his own, take advantage of the national election as an educational opportunity, he said.
"The university environment, we feel, should be the freest and most open of the public forums," said Michael Verderame, a graduate student at Illinois. "To me it felt like an attack on our rights, as members of the community, to express ourselves."
Nelson said that the local AAUP still considered White to be violating the U.S. Constitution despite Monday's announcement. "Obviously this is an improvement, a major improvement over the position that he took before, but it's still not well-informed by law," Nelson said.
The president's statement on Monday said university employees may only wear partisan political buttons when they are neither on duty nor in a workplace environment.
According to Nelson, this means a professor would have to take the button off whenever he entered a university building. Nelson said he intended to write to White again about this specific issue.
The university's reassurances that it does not plan to enforce the law did not seem settle faculty and graduate students' anxieties.
"We think it's a dangerous precedent to set. We have no guarantee that they won't start policing it," Verderame said.
Verderame also said university assertions that the rights and freedoms of its employees could be restricted in this way would create a "chilling effect" that would make people warier of expressing their political opinions in the future.
