Letter from Sara Dogan, National Campus Director, Students for Academic Freedom 

 

March 31, 2005

 

A Victory in Florida

 

Dear Students and Supporters,

 

I am pleased to announce a victory for the Academic Bill of Rights in Florida where on Tuesday, March 22, a Florida House committee approved Bill 837 which would institute an Academic Bill of Rights on that state’s public college and university campuses. The bill was sponsored by Representative Dennis Baxley who said that the bill would prevent professors from abusing their authority “to indoctrinate the next generation." An article in The Ledger, a local paper, stated that “Given Baxley’s powerful post of House Education Council chairman, passage in the House seems likely.”

Students for Academic Freedom applauds this bill as a necessary step to safeguard the academic freedom of Florida’s students. While some Florida university codes already contain similar academic freedom guidelines, these policies are seldom enforced and are not publicized in places where students are likely to search for them such as student handbooks or course catalogues. For example, the Rules of the Department of Education for the University of Florida state that “The University student must ... have the opportunity to study a full spectrum of ideas, opinions, and beliefs, so that the student may acquire maturity for analysis and judgment. Objective and skillful exposition of such matters is the duty of every instructor.”

House Bill 837 would remedy this situation mandating that, “Students, faculty, and instructors have a right to be fully informed of their rights and their institution's grievance procedures for violations of academic freedom by means of notices prominently displayed in course catalogs and student handbooks and on the institutional website.”