The Daily Tar Heel reports that at yesterday’s forum on free speech, Haley Koch, the student who, along with others, disrupted Tom Tancredo’s speech at UNC earlier this year, defined the right to free speech this way (emphasis is mine)
YWC President Nikhil Patel and media lawyer Hugh Stevens joined Koch on Thursday in Carroll Hall to discuss whether she was exercising her First Amendment rights or infringing upon Tancredo’s. Tancredo cut his speech short after police used pepper spray to disperse protesters and a window was broken.
Koch said she and the other protesters were simply voicing their opinions and did not force Tancredo to cut short his speech.
When questioned by a panelist as to whether she believed certain voices should be stifled, Koch said that in some cases, they should.
“I don’t feel their voices contribute to a civil debate or an intellectual climate,†Koch said. “I hope that students will self-organize to decide what is acceptable on a campus community.â€
I hope Chancellor Holden Thorp reads these comments and pauses to wonder how a UNC student could possibly believe that a fundamental constitutional right only applies to some people — those that agree with her of course. This mindset comes from a campus that supposedly champions the so-called marketplace of ideas.
It makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.