Last year the app Yik Yak stormed onto college campuses around the country as an anonymous type of "Twitter."
A place where students had 200 characters to say literally anything they wanted to. And boy did they. Some used the app to ask advice on many different topics and others used it to give advice or to state their opinion.
Today this app is under fire due to hateful and bigoted things that have been said on it. While we all abhor bigoted and hateful speech, we should recognize that free speech is the right of every American, even speech we find morally wrong.
There have been talks of making the app unusable on our campus. Some think this is a great idea.
But before we go and make any hasty decision let's look at the facts.
The first amendment guarantees every American the right to freedom of speech. This is not arguable. There are some exceptions like yelling fire in a crowded room.
However, for the most part, there is no exception.
Now the biggest argument here is the anonymity that comes with Yik Yak. People say that freedom of speech does not include the right to anonymity. The Supreme Court of the United States disagrees.
And as they are the highest authority on constitutional law in the country, their decision is final. In Talley v. California, SCOTUS said that anonymity was one of the hallmarks of our first amendment rights. Disabling an app around our campus to prevent hateful things to be said is nothing short of insanity.
I will be honest in saying that I do not know what happened on that upstate school's campus, and I do not care. If they want to shut down an app so be it but we should not take the cowards way out.
Why not use this time to address the issue of hate? To shut down an app because someone has been offended is ludicrous. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen a Facebook page or a Twitter feed that made me upset or offended me.
That doesn't mean that I am going to try to shut Facebook or Twitter down. If the only difference between these two issues is the anonymity of one and the fact that those who post offensive things on Facebook or Twitter do it knowing that anyone can see that it was they who said it does not make their hateful speech more protected than any other speech.
In 1995, the Supreme Court decided in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission that "Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views."
Yik Yak may not have been what the Justices had in mind when they decided this case but the facts remain that the restriction of speech based on anonymity is illegal and has no place on this campus.
Also, the restriction on this app because of what is said on it also would violate the First Amendment for the very same reason. Protection of hateful or unpopular beliefs or opinions is still necessary. The argument here is should Yik Yak be banned due to offensive things that are said on it. The answer is unequivocally no.
To ban something because of offensive or unpopular ideas goes against 200 years worth of Supreme Court precedent. Terminiello v. Chicago (1949), Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992), Snyder v. Phelps (2011) are all cases representing the need to protect hateful and unpopular speech. All upheld by the Supreme Court.
In the end, a ban on Yik Yak would be a ban on my and your first amendment rights. A ban that SCOTUS says is inconceivable.