As a student at New College of Florida in Sarasota, I recently experienced two instances where free speech was challenged. The way they were handled — where one was deemed worthy of protection and the other wasn’t — could serve as a lesson in questioning authority.
I am the president of NCF’s chapter of the League of Women Voters (LWV), a nonpartisan grassroots organization made up of national and local chapters committed to voter advocacy and political engagement. Since its founding in 1920, the LWV has been dedicated to educating all citizens, not just women, on voting and suffrage.
Prior to club rush, student coordinator Fernando Capula emailed me about topics the LWV table at Novoaplooza, the college’s fall kickoff, was not permitted to discuss. Capula stated in his email that I was not permitted to discuss “voting-related discussions,” which is the point of LWV at the college and nationally. How can clubs recruit students without discussing their main missions or purposes? I reached out for clarification and Capula wrote that the club “is absolutely welcome to have discussions related to voting while tabling.” My LWV representative and I refrained from displaying any voter registration information at our table because of both emails. As a current student at NCF, I was also afraid to question Capula further.
We had also planned to register students to vote on campus, but Capula cited a “state guideline” and called it illegal. Florida Senate Bill 7050, voted on in May 2023, states that “third-party voter registration organizations provide to the Division of Elections the general election cycle for which they are registering persons to vote” and other strict guidelines pertaining to voter registration. However, nowhere does it state that registering students to vote on a public college campus is prohibited.
According to a phone interview with Lauren James from the Florida Department of Elections with Third Parties, voter registration “is between the petitioner and the University. We have no statute or rule on that. We just leave it to the university and the third party.” If NCF had said that they themselves prohibited the LWV from registering students to vote, that would have been legal. However, blaming a nonexistent “state law” is inaccurate.
On Sept. 17, National Voter Registration Day, the LWV registered university students to vote across Florida campuses including Santa Fe College, UCF and USF. State law had not barred other college campuses from registering students to vote.
Also during club rush, the college’s chapter of Turning Point displayed a poster that read, “9 mm beats 911 every time.” The message is alarming, especially on a college campus where guns are absolutely prohibited. Even though the message is not directed at anyone nor creates an imminent threat of violence, I sent an email to Vice President of Student Services Almeda Jacks to voice these concerns.
“This club does have the right of free speech to say what they want or post what they want,” Jacks wrote. “This is truly about free speech from a club.”
The NCF chapter of LWV was silenced before I even set up a table, but Turning Point’s speech was permitted with no issues. One club’s speech was censored while another’s was not.
That the Turning Point poster was permitted at Novopalooza and subsequently posted on an Instagram account representing NCF alarmed me, especially in light of the administration’s detailed email censoring voting-related conversations. While I had to push hard for my club’s message, Turning Point’s message was allowed and even defended.
When something is said, even from a source of authority, there is nothing wrong with questioning that statement. The very essence of democracy is the freedom to question and to do one’s own research. When society stops asking, fascism thrives. When we allow ourselves to be bullied by authorities in power, that is when free speech truly dies.
Alexandra Levy, born and raised in Miami Beach, is a third-year political science/creative writing student at New College Florida and a founding staff writer of Old School Catalyst, an independent student and alumni newspaper.
