Century College has not learned from its run-in with freedom of inquiry. After becoming embroiled in controversy over the Mohammed cartoons in February and March, it could have chosen to make a statement about free speech, but instead has responded with a ten-point policy governing what goes on a bulletin board on its campus. Herewith the more egregious four:

• 3. Department bulletin boards are intended for the display of materials directly related to activities and events of the academic area(s).
• 4. Materials must be approved for posting by the chair or program director prior to posting to ensure the criterion stated in section 3 is met. If a department member disagrees with a decision made by the chair or program director, the member may ask for a review of the decision by the department. A 2/3 majority vote by department members is required to approve posting of the material.
  
• 5. Departmental bulletin boards may not be mounted on college property without the prior approval of the department and the academic vice president.
• 6. Posted material must be contained within the bulletin boards and dated with the date approved by the department (e.g., “approved 03/07/06”). Material must be removed either (a) 24 hours after an event promoted with a posting has passed or (b) at the end of each semester. Renewal of posted material meeting the criterion stated in section 3 above is permitted if the approval process in section 4 is followed.

This policy is akin to the policy that would govern student organizations here at SCSU. It is an egregious violation of a faculty member's rights to require prior permission of an administrator to advertise an event, and to require a super-majority of departmental faculty to override the administrator's veto of a display. The administrator's cowardice is duly noted in this interview a few years ago with Alan Charles Kors:

That universities govern by self-censorship is absolutely true, but no one is going to take anyone away in the middle of the night. We are not in Eastern Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. This is a classic case in which people through their cowardice and their failure to bear witness to their real beliefs, their failure to defend their own liberties and dignity are half of the equation of the catastrophe of political correctness. The oppressors have oppressed, but people should have fought back passionately and not rolled over and played dead… Liberty is going to die in the hearts of a generation of college students and that bodes very ill for the future of this society.