George Will has a great column today about a Montana university that restricts candidates for student government offices to a maximum of $100 in campaign expenses.

The Associated Students of the University of Montana (ASUM) allocates student activity fees, which are public funds, and lobbies students, the university administration and the state Legislature on policy matters. In April 2004, Aaron Flint ran for the student senate. During the campaign, a large number of posters critical of him appeared around the campus. He believes they were placed by the University of Montana College Democrats and the liberal Montana Public Interest Research Group. Neither group is subject to the expenditure limits applied to candidates.

To counter this opposition, Flint spent $214.69 of his own money on professionally made posters and pizza for his campaign workers. He won. But because he spent an impermissible $114.69 — enough to buy seven large Domino’s pepperoni pizzas — in order to respond to unregulated speech, ASUM removed him from office. This presumably taught the university’s students important lessons about the civic danger posed by too many posters (too much political speech) and too much pizza, and about the dignity of the law.

Campaign finance laws - federal, state, or on campus - are an assault on first amendment rights.

Money quote:

So the question is: To what pressing problem did the university’s $100 limit respond? Or is it merely another manifestation of the regnant liberalism common on most campuses — the itch to boss people around?

Related content:

This entry was posted by Brian on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 4:19 am and is filed under Education, Free Speech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.