Put a Muzzle on it

Lauren Thiery
To You Editor, Fused

A press release issued from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression announced on April 8 the recipients of their annual Muzzle awards.

The Muzzle awards are given to the “best Muzzlers of free speech.” They are intended to recognize specific colleges, high schools and other organizations that have essentially “muzzled” its students or patrons; in some way or another, the rights to freedom of speech or expression, which are guaranteed by the First Amendment, have been taken away from those who have been promised these rights since they were first enacted in the Bill of Rights.

According to the press release, the awards are given “to those who in the preceding year committed some of the more egregious or ridiculous affronts to the First Amendment rights of free speech and free press.”

The list of those noted for oppressing the right to free expression include the administrations of the Academy for Arts, Science & Technology in Myrtle Beach, S.C. and Millard South High School in Omaha, Neb., among others.

In these instances, school officials from the Academy for Arts, Science & Technology prevented its student newspaper from distributing an issue that included a story pertaining to same-sex marriage. At Millard South High, officials suspended 23 students for “wearing T-shirts commemorating a classmate that police said was killed in a gang-related shooting.”

These Muzzle awards clearly do not celebrate something positive, they recognize something negative—the “proliferation of measures taken to prevent controversial speech,” as Robert O’Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center, puts it.