Centerfield

I love free speech

LSU, my alma mater and current employer, has for decades maintained a tradition known as "Free Speech Alley". Every Wednesday, anybody with something to say gets up to say it at a particular spot in front of the popular and crowded student union. There's a moderator of sorts who does nothing more than keep things orderly so only one person has the bench at a time. It's open to anybody, and let me tell you, anybody comes. In addition to the regular Wednesday quasi-organized show, the spot itself tends to attract a regular crowd of preachers, pontificators, and product purveyors.

Today, there was a band playing Mardi Gras music for background. At one end of the line of tables piled with literature was a lone Muslim student explaining more about the Prophet. There was a well-dressed group of students promoting the Methodists at another table. A young child with the group of Christians carrying banners of bible verses handed me a small comic book showing a man being judged by God and found wanting, with a Capra-esque coda showing what would happen if he repented instead of continuing to wilfully sin. A couple of the preacher-types were shouting at passerby, but not in an overly obnoxious way (and everybody knows to be ready for that sort of thing on Wednesdays in that spot), plus he was mostly drowned out by the Mardi Gras music. A pretty female student was handing out free samples of a popular scent. There was even a table for the AHA organization of "Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics", completely with guides to the non-spiritual life.

This happens every week. And there are no fights, no riots, no violence of any kind. Students talk back at the preachers and anybody else they disagree with, and there are always quiet religious types who try to speak quietly and privately with interested students in a sincere desire to help them. I love this country. And I love the college campus.