Since the most recent presidential election, our right to freedom of speech has been exhausted by the variety of opinions people in America hold. The discrepancy in opinions are most common regarding equality, religion, race, gun control, women’s rights, political agendas and so much more. Through the acts of peaceful protests, rallies, and even violent riots, American citizens attempt to advance their positions using their first amendment right. For my DIY #3, I chose to explore freedom of speech within the boundaries of the USC community in order to acquire opinions and subsequently raise awareness on how we, as Trojans, can use productive and respectful speech to change the course of today’s society.
I found it necessary to introduce my vox pop with an attention grabbing, emotional recording of a protest chant I found in a youtube clip. In doing so, free speech and democracy, two of America’s most defining traits, are immediately engrained into the listener’s mind. The young girl fighting for her beliefs evokes emotion in the listener, and pushes one to exercise their own freedom of speech. Prior to my interviews, I researched freedom of speech on college campuses across the United States and gained an understanding of student’s opinions of this topic, and what universities are doing to stop the negative spread of information. For example, I found that over 350 colleges are taking action against hate speech on their campuses, as mentioned in an article from the Freedom Forum Institute. Fortunately, as received from a nationwide pollon student free speech on campus, 87% of students state that they approve of their campus’s job of promoting free speech in the classroom and around the school. While these are favorable statistics, I felt it was necessary to interview students and staff in order to gauge sentiment on USC’s treatment and promotion of free speech. USC is a particularly interesting environment to interview students and staff because city-wide and student lead protests are common around campus; after the 2016 presidential election, students lead anti-Trump protests, and the Downtown Los Angeles marches ended up spilling onto campus.
As we know, our country is filled with varied beliefs on freedom of speech. Furthermore, the University of Southern California has an extremely diverse student population thus leading me to believe that I would be exposed to these different beliefs while interviewing. Throughout my interview process, I spoke to a wide variety of people in the Trojan Family from different walks of life. I spoke to one business major student, one accounting major student, one communications major student, one security guard, and one member of the Greek community. Their differing backgrounds set up the framework for their supported and educated opinions. The different responses I received proved my preconceived notion of varying opinions. Nevertheless, my greatest takeaway from studying this topic is that in order for one to protect their freedom of speech and expression, people must become tolerant and respectful of other opinions. Without this open mindedness, people will become unwilling to voice their opinions or rather revert to hate speech or violence in order to get their point across.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2RlIwpq7co
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sfmpoeytvqc3cl2/NATL%20College%2010-25-15%20Presentation.pdf?dl=0
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/11/12/missouri-yale-campus-speech-first-amendment/75600646/
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