Free Speech Zones Aff
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- Free speech zones damage the quality of student discussion
extra biopower cardsThe otherizing criminology supported by free speech zones depicts criminals as dangerous enemies to excite fear and support for harsh punishments. Characterization of criminals as “evil” or “dangerous” precludes the possibility of remedial steps to end crimeOtherizing crime bad bc it prevents humane alternatives/solutions Biopolitical bc it views criminology as biological (something that ppl are rather than something ppl do) Garland 96 [Garland, David, Professor, Centre for Law and Society, University of Edinburgh. "The limits of the Sovereign state strategies of crime control in contemporary society." British journal of criminology 36.4 (1996): 445-471.] SW 2/3/2016 Accompanying these punitive policies is a certain criminology that looks quite different from the criminologies of everyday life that inform the preventive and de-escalating measures described above. Whereas the latter depict the offender as a rational opportunist, little different from his or her victim, the criminology invoked by the punitive strategy is one of essentialized difference. It is a criminology of the alien other which represents criminals as dangerous members of distinct racial and social groups which bear little resemblance to 'us'. It is, moreover, a 'criminology' which trades in images, archetypes and anxieties, rather than in careful analyses and research findings—more a politicized discourse of the unconscious than a detailed form of knowledge-for-powcr. Punitive policies are premised upon characterizations of offenders as 'yobs', 'predators', 'career criminals', 'sex beasts', as 'evil', 'wicked', or member of an 'underclass' (Coward 1994)—each of these being 'suitable enemies' (Christie 1986) for a ruling culture stressing family values, individual enterprise, and the limits of welfarism, each of them examples of what Mary Douglas terms 'the political uses of danger' (Douglas 1992). In this rhetoric, and in its policy effects, offenders are treated as a different species of threatening, violent individuals for whom we can have no sympathy and for whom there is no effective help. The only practical and rational response to such types is to have them 'taken out of circulation' for the protection of the public, whether by long-term imprisonment, as in the UK, or else by judicial killing, as is increasingly the case in the USA. So, at the same time that shallow-end deviance is defined down, more serious offences are dealt with in a much more punitive manner, with increases in the proportionate use of custody for adult offences and in the average length of prison sentences during the 1980s (see Reiner and Cross 1991: 2-3). We thus have an official criminology which is increasingly dualistic, increasingly polarized, and increasingly ambivalent. There is a criminology of the self, that characterizes offenders as rational consumers, just like us; and there is a criminology of the other, of the threatening outcast, the fearsome stranger, the excluded and the embittered. One is invoked to routinize crime, to allay disproportionate fears and to promote preventive action. The other is concerned to demonize the criminal, to excite popular fears and hostilities, and to promote support for state punishment. The excluded middle-ground here, is precisely the once-dominant welfarist criminology which depicted the offender as disadvantaged or poorly socialized and made it the state's responsibility—in social as well as penal policy—to take positive steps of a remedial kind. One might say that we are developing an official criminology that fits our social and cultural configuration—one in which amorality, generalized insecurity and enforced exclusion are coming to prevail over the traditions of welfarism and social citizenship. Free speech zones form states of exception, stripping citizens of rights based on their position within a government-defined spaceKoch 12 [William Koch (Visiting Assistant Professor at Department of Philosophy, University of North Florida), "Claiming the Camp: Biopolitics and the Occupy Movement," 4/19/2012] AZ The irony of the moment when governmental power becomes the power to declare a state of exception is that it is precisely the claim to one’s rights that frequently provokes the declaration on the part of government power of a state of exception. So long as one does not seek to practice one’s rights or appeal to the law no state of exception is necessary. However, demand your rights and you take yourself out of the protected classes of the home-owner, consumer or business-person and place yourself in the perpetually endangered, because always open to exception, class of bare-citizen. We see this with the creation of “free speech zones”. Go about your daily business and you might feel that all public spaces in America function as free speech zones. That, indeed, seems to be what the right to a freedom of speech is about. In fact, however, public space is open only to the free speech of consumers. Choose, however, to make an issue of the right to free speech and your very practice of that right becomes the justification for declaring you within a state of exception which limits your right to freedom of speech to a specific area designated by governmental power, usually a fenced off out of the way protest zone. It is by demanding your rights that you become excepted from them. We see this clearly when we consider the Occupy Movement’s practice of occupation. Surely it is any citizen’s rights to walk down Wall St. It is a public street and it is inconceivable that access to it would be denied to a citizen without some pretty hefty justification. The number of citizens wanting to take the stroll and the reason they want to take the stroll do not count as such a hefty justification, while a dangerous gas leak might. But, gather with other citizens and demand one’s right to walk down Wall St. and immediately you face barricades and policy brutality. This is not so surprising, suggests Agamben, as the modern interest in natural rights rides on the back of a strikingly contrary view. If we follow Agamben in looking back at Greek and Roman law we see that the founding action of a city or state consists in setting off the status of community membership from that of a natural living being. To be a citizen is to be something other than, and apart from, simply an existing human being. Biopolitics extends this by governing and structuring subjects existing only within the realm of bare-life rather than simply ignoring, killing or exiling them as would be more common in the ancient context. This carries important connections to the debt crisis as well. Debt crises are not new things, though the form and necessity of debt in consumer society is a unique development. Within the ancient world there were two likely outcomes of the creation of large-scale inescapable debt and each takes the form of a state of exception. Within Mesopotamia, for example ancient Sumerian and Babylonian societies, crushing debt often forced city dwellers to reject city life and leave the boundaries of the community. These self-exiled individuals would then join nomadic communities existing outside the city walls. By doing so they were reduced, at least for a time, to the status of bare-life losing all legal protection and property as well as, from the viewpoint of city culture, facing a life much like that of a wild animal. Alternatively, those inescapably indebted often found themselves reduced to bare-life in being made into slaves, another case of being placed outside the standard boundaries of community and into a state in which they were excepted from standard legal protects, duties and privileges. Within contemporary society the debtor does not generally face debtor’s prison, enslavement or standard exile, and indeed foreclosing the possibility of debtors escaping its social force is a major priority of biopolitics, but instead they face the risk of being placed in the more common state of exception which comes from no longer being functioning consumers. Joblessness, homelessness, and poverty, aside from their many dangers and deprivations, also bring with them a decreased protection from either the abuse of others or the often arbitrary exercise of legal force. The homeless can be herded from place to place, their rights to public space either flat out denied or dramatically limited through ever shifting relocations and baroque regulation. They exist permanently within a state of exception. In this way we see the double edge nature of contemporary rights. They trace out areas of protected freedoms only to the extent that those freedoms are practiced according to the standard biopolitical dictates of consumption, work and minimal debt repayment. Without the prescribed use of these freedoms, however, rights serve rather to isolate and pick out those who have been placed, through choice or unavoidable circumstance, in a state of exception marked by their existence merely as bearers of rights. Free speech zones damage the quality of student discussionMelchior 16 [Jillian Melchior, "Students, Lawmakers Push to Ban Restrictive Campus ‘Free Speech Zones’" Heat Street, 8/30/2016] AZ “Designated free speech areas” are actually proliferating on campuses nationwide. At least 70 universities had created some form of free speech zone as of 2013, the last year the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education took a tally. Yet in the past two years, backlash against these restrictive free speech zones has also intensified, with several universities and state legislatures moving to expand rights on campus. “Free speech zones are ironically named, since they send the message that the overwhelming percentage of campus is not open to free speech,” says Ari Cohn, a free speech lawyer with FIRE. “What’s worse is that these free speech zones generally confine students’ exercise of their expressive rights to tiny areas that are often out of sight,” including a gazebo, a basketball court, and even one “in a small patch of grass prone to flooding.” Robin Denny, director of media relations for Clemson, says the free speech zones apply only to people who don’t attend or work at the public University; they were created about a decade ago, partially out of security concerns and partially to ensure outsiders didn’t interrupt class or study. “This is for people who are external to the University. … Students have freedom of expression on campus,” Denny says. But Kyra Palange, the Clemson graduate student who videotaped the exchange between the praying man and the administrator, says she doesn’t agree with the University’s rules. Far from soliciting students as Clemson claims, Palange says, the man was sitting quietly beside a sign inviting students to come pray with him. He never approached them—or even engaged with them unless they initiated contact, she says. “I detest the whole idea of free speech zones,” Palange says. “Because this is a public university that’s funded by taxpayer dollars, someone doing what this man was doing—sitting on campus praying and interacting with students—should not have to get permission. The whole idea of free speech zones implies that there are places where people cannot express their ideas freely, and that’s a very dangerous road to be walking down.” Palange is not alone in her criticism of free speech zones. Since 2014, statehouses in Virginia, Missouri and Arizona have passed legislation banning free speech zones on campus and reaffirming the students’ rights to free speech anywhere. Last month, the University of Colorado Boulder’s student government unanimously passed a resolution calling for administrators to eliminate free speech zones and declare the entire campus protected under the First Amendment. Colton Lyons, the student body co-president, recently said that under current rules, “The free speech zones are so restrictive that only 5 percent of the student body could engage in free speech at one time without scheduling in advance.” Marcus Fotenos, CU Boulder’s other student body co-president, tells Heat Street that student government has had several productive conversations with administration about formalizing these changes. “Limiting speech on campus is completely antithetical to everything that university life stands for,” he says. “Restricting students’ ability to express their ideas freely diminishes the quality of debate and discussion that helps individuals progress in their thoughts and ideas.” At Iowa State University, the student government renamed its free speech zone, calling it “Agora” to avoid misinterpretation. “We don’t have free speech zones; the entire campus is free expression,” said student body president Cole Staudt. 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