Can handing out copies of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights on a public college campus get you locked up? Until recently, if you tried to do so on the campus of Chicago-area College of DuPage, the answer was yes. Let’s go to the videotape:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYePLvkNlUs

The problem in the September 18, 2015, video is not so much that the officer didn’t know what he was talking about. It is that he did. He was enforcing the standing policies of the community college.

Joseph Enders, a political science major, was starting a Turning Point USA chapter at the college. TPUSA is a student mobilization organization that promotes free markets and limited government.

Enders was handing out copies of the Constitution and asking fellow students if they would be interested in joining the group when he was approached by the officer, who told the student that he was violating school policy. Enders, said the officer, would have to go to the Student Life office to acquire a permit in order to be allowed to speak to other students and give out free Constitutions. The officer also told the student he couldn’t carry an American flag into the Student Life office.

Why?

The officer explains:

“You can’t have everyone out here doing this … Otherwise you’d have stuff lined up all along here. Everyone having a different view, a different point of view. So you can’t do that.”

Another student asks the obvious question about free speech on public property.

“It’s not free speech ma’am. Nobody’s stopping you from free speech. But you can’t solicit out here … [and] you’re soliciting your opinions.”

And should the students fail to obtain a permit and continue to hand out the very document that affirms their protections against government speech suppression?

“You can’t do it out here. Otherwise, I’m gonna have to lock you up.”

Alliance Defending Freedom sent a friendly letter to the school on October 14, 2015, reminding it that the First Amendment does, in fact, protect speech and the school’s policies don’t. So one needed to yield to the other.

In the letter, ADF offered “to assist the College, free of charge, in reviewing and revising its speech policies to ensure that they comply with the College’s obligations under the First Amendment.”

The letter explained, in part:

Prior restraints on speech are disfavored and carry a heavy presumption of unconstitutionality because they censor speech before it occurs. This presumption is “justified by the fact that ‘prior restraints on speech . . . are the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.'”

Further:

The College’s policy granting unfettered discretion to campus officials to admit or deny the speech application is also unconstitutional. The Supreme Court consistently condemns regulations on speech that vest discretion in an administrative official to grant or withhold a permit based upon broad criteria unrelated to the proper regulation of public places. “If the permit scheme involves the appraisal of facts, exercise of judgment, and formation of an opinion, the danger of censorship is too great to be permitted.” Left with only vague or non-existent criteria on which to base their decision, government officials “may decide who may speak and who may not based upon the content of the speech or viewpoint of the speaker.”

Pretty cut-and-dried, no? But I bet you think the college shooed and poo-pooed. You know … the Constitution represents a micro-aggression or intersectionality transgression or something, so can therefore be banned, burned, and then burned again.

Plot twist!

To its credit, the college, in contrast to so many other institutions of higher learning in America today, re-examined its policies and revised them to respect students’ constitutional freedoms.

So, good on the College of Dupage for doing the right thing and understanding that the only permission students need to engage in protected speech is already provided. In the First Amendment.