Palm Beach State University in Palm Beach, Florida is not a big fan of its students’ First Amendment rights. Or students doing pretty much anything without getting preclearance from the administration. As a matter of fact, in reviewing PBSC’s policies and actions you have to wonder if there is some heretofore unknown annual award for the most unconstitutional university policies – and if maybe PBSC is working hard on its entry.

Back in the spring, Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative student organization, was trying to organize on campus. A PBSC administrator informed the group that it would need to return in the fall and try to recruit at the fall student organization fair. This meant many months of not having an active group, but they played along. In the fall, a PBSC student, Christina Beattie, contacted the appropriate administrator and got the ok for the group to table and recruit a sufficient number of students to form a group on campus. A handful of students and other YAF members set up a table and began distributing information on the group’s views, including reports from the Heritage Foundation on the “Stimulus” (click here to review the offending words for yourself). This was apparently too much for the same administrator who had given them permission, but now could not recall ever doing so just days earlier. As the video shows, she ordered them to immediately remove their literature.

But that’s just the beginning. It turns out that Palm Beach State’s written policy requires advance permission to distribute literature, providing administrators total discretion as to whether to allow the exercise of this First Amendment right. That’s problematic enough. A system requiring a student to submit literature 24 hours in advance of distribution for the university’s approval – particularly when it allows administrators to censor literature because of the views expressed or that would not be disruptive in any way – is itself a clear violation of the First Amendment.

 But still, YAF tried to play along. They followed the policy and asked for the supposed form to seek permission to distribute their literature. That’s when they learned that the promised form didn’t really exist. Rather, they were told by administrators that any literature distribution was simply forbidden altogether.

No student can hand another student anything in writing on campus at Palm Beach State University. Of course, some are willfully allowed to slip through the cracks. A blood drive just occurred on campus and students handed out literature advertising it (and evidently the educational mission of the school escaped unscathed). But the official policy, applicable at least to YAF, is that all written words are verboten. When you couple this with the fact that the school also prohibits “the sending of offensive … messages,” (where it decides whether your message is “offensive”), and it’s not a sunny picture for free speech on campus at Palm Beach State University.

But PBSC’s censorship doesn’t even stop at the campus gate. PBSC also requires student groups, whether recognized or not, to get permission for any weekend or evening (after 9 p.m.) activity two weeks in advance – whether on or off campus! Would you like to hold a rally to protest some new proposal to limit student freedoms that was just announced yestereday?  Want to go bowling with your friends this weekend?  You should have thought of that a couple of weeks ago. And if YAF wants to hand out voter guides prior to the election in downtown Palm Beach, even as a non-registered group, it would need to get permission (with no applicable standards) from their advisor and the dean of student services. And they are unlimited in their authority to deny the request.

It’s a dark and dreary day for the First Amendment at Palm Beach State. ADF is working with allied attorney Rick Nelson, a veteran of First Amendment battles on campus, of the American Liberties Institute to try to restore the constitutional rights of YAF and all PBSC students.  If you think your university could give PBSC’s entry a run for its money in the anti-First Amendment awards, we’d love to hear about it.