Hinds Community College, AKA “Vulgarity Police”

By Naama Levy

Freedom of speech regarding profanity and vulgarity is not a highly controversial issue in American universities. Most professors realize that their students, people in their twenties and thirties, are old enough to hear a curse word here and there without anyone panicking about it. However, evidently in some colleges swearing can get you in big trouble.
Hinds Community College recently gave a student twelve demerits- three short of suspension- for swearing after class. 29-year-old Isaac Rosenbloom stayed after class with a few other students to discuss grades with the instructor and at some point he said that his grade is “going to f–k up my entire GPA.” According to Rosenbloom, the instructor, Barbara Pyle, began yelling and threatening to give him a detention. Rosenbloom replied that detention is not a method of punishment at HCC, so Pyle sent him to the dean. She then submitted a disciplinary complaint against Rosenbloom, arguing that “this language was not to be tolerated [and] he could not say that under any circumstances [including in] the presence of the other students.”
Rosenbloom was charged with “flagrant disrespect” and was expelled from Pyle’s class. A record of the decision was also put in his student file. He turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). FIRE argued that the college’s speech policies are unconstitutional and that Rosebloom’s punishment was not justified, especially since the incident happened outside of class. “Outside of official class time, HCC has no authority to punish a student for cursing in this way or for being ‘disrespectful,’” said Adam Kissel, Director of FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program.
FIRE is absolutely right in protecting Rosenbloom’s freedom of speech. First of all, it’s absurd to treat grown adults like elementary school kids and to try to ban profanity when people obviously use it all the time. Secondly, the instructor simply did not have the authority to do this; she could ask her students to watch their language, but she cannot punish them for using words she does not find adequate. The college crossed its limits of power by penalizing a student for such a thing. Their policies quite obviously violate the First Amendment. If the student had begun shouting obscenities and disrupting class, it would be a different story, it wouldn’t even be a First Amendment issue. But Rosenbloom did not shout and did not disturb any campus activity. Not only was it immature and out of place for Pyle to try to control her students’ speech, but it’s not her decision to make.