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by dem_bones_ 249 days ago
Did you read the rest of the paragraph prior to the sentence you quoted? Any use of lawful force has to be justified by prevention of the violations described thus:

> Signatories acknowledge that the freedom to debate requires conditions of civility. Civility includes protections against institutional punishment or individual harassment for one’s views. Universities shall neither support nor permit a heckler’s veto through, for example, disruptions, violence, intimidation, or vandalism. Universities shall be responsible for ensuring that they do not knowingly: (1) permit actions by the university, university employees, university students, or individuals external to the university community to delay or disrupt class instruction or disrupt libraries or other traditional study locations; (2) allow demonstrators to heckle or accost individual students or groups of students; or (3) allow obstruction of access to parts of campus based on students’ race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.

Misbehaving children need to dealt with too, within the bounds of what is allowed by law. Otherwise, what, you want a loophole for them to get away with all of the above?

2 comments

Yes, I read that. As you said, the law is still operant. This is not about normal law enforcement, this is about willingness to be more aggressive than the police normally would.

> to delay or disrupt class instruction or disrupt libraries or other traditional study locations

No, I do not think that it is reasonable for a child to be beaten or shot because someone delayed a class somewhere on campus (note that this does not even indicate that the harmed student must have been part of the demonstration).

> allow demonstrators to heckle or accost individual students

I do not think this is generally enforceable outside of a police state. And no, I do not consider it reasonable for a child to be beaten or shot because a person was "heckled" somewhere on campus.

I am using "beaten or shot" because that's always a likely event when "lawful force" is exercised in America.

> you want a loophole for them to get away with all of the above

No, I want to fall back on our existing laws, which have the benefit of decades/centuries of precedent, and which are enforced in more transparent fora.

> Misbehaving children need to dealt with too, within the bounds of what is allowed by law. Otherwise, what, you want a loophole for them to get away with all of the above?

Heckling is not against the law last I checked.

At first, I thought it was a protected form of speech. TIL, I was wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler%27s_veto

Your link does not back up your claim that heckling is illegal. In none of the cases mentioned in that article is heckling found to be illegal.
Here is a better article that I intended to post, plus a couple more for some nuance on 1a protected speech vs. regulated speech

https://nefac.org/is-heckling-a-speaker-a-crime/

https://www.aclumich.org/en/cases/hecklers-veto

https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-first-amendment-does-no....

None of these establish heckling as illegal. The first two are about the police not being able to arrest the target of the heckling for incitement (which, yeah, clear 1st amendment violation), the last is about Stanford imposing limits, which is entirely different from the government doing so.