No. The Constitution and more specifically the first amendment does not give you the liberty to say whatever you want to say where ever you want to say it without fear of repercussion for your words/actions from other citizens. The only thing the first amendment does is it prevents the government from infringing on your right to speak. The government is not involved in this discussion.

Though what you do have is a school administration attempting to bully a lone student into complying with their desires because the administration is bowing down to an anti-choice group that’s being backed by conservative media. And WKU doesn’t want the bad press.

Another thing that I do not agree with is Gary Ransdell made her apologize for what she did. By doing that he violated her right to speak freely and indirectly spit in the faces of the whole art department because speaking freely is the big part of being an artist. For a man who spent 100′s of thousands of our tuition money to purchase all the art around campus that reminded him of the Spirit of Western, his choice to punish the art student instead of the student group for the situation in general is highly hypocritical of him.

While I believe this young lady was within her rights, her display was crude and message-less. Great art must move people, fill them with an emotion for something, but it must also make a point. I may very well be wrong about this – I did not see the display, but I don’t believe HFL was stating in this display that they were against sex, just against the abortion of life created via that medium. So then how does the draping of condoms over crosses representing fetuses already created make a valid statement? I’m just asking the question here because I believe it is a valid one that does not necessarily call for an apology from the student, but a reexamination of her project for quality of work.

Merely doing something shocking does not qualify said work as something of quality if the work itself is senseless. If that were the case, it would be quite easy to attain an “A” in an art class at WKU. I can hardly wait to see what media attention students seeking shock value without inhibition will cause on campus if this is not dealt with in an academically professional way.

I cannot say how disappointed I am in Ransdell for attempting to put words in the student’s mouth.

And the student should get full credit for the assignment, she followed the professor’s instructions and did not alter the primary display permanently. What the anti-choice group is doing is nothing short of petty revenge and bullying.

The “interactive boards” were also places where students placed messages of protest, though I confess many of them were in poor taste, both in matters of grammar and public decency. I sympathized, however, with the irritation of those who posted those messages. The stadium-sized display amounted to a visual assault. HFL’s message of “life” could not be easily read from the elevation from which students normally enter the building, so that many students were simply confused about why the bleachers where we often eat lunch, study, and congregate were covered by crosses and red and black material.

While I firmly support HFL’s right to speak freely, I think a week-long installation of such magnitude was intrusive, and I fully support the art student’s right to publicly respond to such a display. She wasn’t the only one considering it, she was simply the one voice that responded, in kind, to the display. Personally, I applaud that one voice, and thank her for speaking out on my behalf.

–Holly Hudnall