This letter by a freshman at UNC-Chapel Hill clearly exhibits what passes for speech protection on campus on many campuses today. The logic is painful to read, so painful in fact that I read it half expecting it to be satire (q.v., “If a person believes in their opinion so strongly that they believe that it is their right to put someone else?s emotional health at risk, then they are wrong”). But it is essentially the same underlying concept behind campus speech codes: to “protect” college students (that is to say, adults) from offensive speech and ideas. As the student put it, “Everyone has the right to espouse their opinions. But” —

Fortunately for her peers, at least the ideas to which this student responded were allowed on campus at UNC-CH.