Canceled event prompts discussion of hate speech/free speech

BY ELLINOR COUCHMAN

In January, a provocative poster greeted the Hays community for an event hosted by the Ellis County Patriots which promised to deride public education.

Although inclement weather canceled the event, the poster proved controversial – inciting the nature of free speech and where to draw the line.

The Ellis County Patriots, a private Facebook group founded in 2021, explicitly disallows hate speech according to their pages’ community standards. Still, FHSU political science professor Wendy Rohleder-Sook said the event is easy to construe as discriminatory.  

“I think people would look at it and say, ‘Well, maybe that’s speech, or that could be discussions, that are going to target particular people in a hostile way’ […] you know, they can choose who participates and who is in that discussion and who is not,” Rohleder-Sook said.

One of Rohleder-Sook’s current students, Freshman Grace McCord, aspires to advocate women’s rights – joining the American Democracy Project last fall to generate questions for Tiger Talkback in the memorial union.  She said her time at Fort Hays State University has shown a need to learn how people can speak freely without hurting others.  

“There’s a gap between understanding what free speech and hate speech is, and there’s so much gray area in between–especially in the area that we live in,” McCord said.

Last year, the American Democracy Project also sparked controversy with FHSU’s Gender-Sexuality Alliance after asking the Tiger Talkback question “Should trans athletes be allowed to compete in sports?” during transgender day of visibility.  Several anonymous students wrote that the question was “not up for debate” and “incited transphobic responses.”

McCord said the American Democracy Project has instituted measures to prevent such issues going forward.  

“We put it through a couple different people within the political science program and department, so that way, we have a couple more eyes on the questions now before they come out,” she said.

Junior Kiernan McCarty, vice president of the Gender-Sexuality Alliance, shares a similar perspective on how to approach hate speech.  As a transgender man, regardless of the controversy, he encourages curiosity instead of taking hate speech at face value.  

“It’s easy to polarize people because everybody has social and cultural understandings of different words, […] so you’re just going to have to break down those barriers and communicate about the words you’re communicating about,” he said.

Regardless of modern political debates, free speech and hate speech alike are first amendment rights.  To that end, the Ellis County Patriots’ critique of libraries is notable, given the library’s role of facilitating free information.  Heather VanDyne, Kansas representative to the American Library Association (ALA), says that libraries play a vital role in our democracy. 

“It wasn’t until I started working in libraries that I saw how important it was to show all views and to not lean towards one or the other,” VanDyne said. 

VanDyne also emphasized the importance of “free” in “free speech”.  

“There are very few places in the world where you can walk in and get whatever you want,” she said.

Still, VanDyne believes that hate speech can have a ripple effect in our age of social media.  

“I think we saw it on January 6 – how words can stir people up into a frenzy and can lead to those violent actions,” she said.

While free speech can pose a threat to democracy, it can also create democracy.  Hsin-Yen Yang is a communication studies professor at FHSU.  Before coming to Hays, though, she was a political campaigner in Taiwan’s democratization movement.  In the 80s and 90s, she witnessed Taiwan’s transition from a totalitarian state under martial law to ranking first in the International Humanist and Ethical Union’s Freedom of Thought Report. 

“I grew up in a society where people can get arrested for reading a dangerous book or attending a peaceful assembly. Many people even lost their lives fighting for freedom of speech,” Yang said.

Knowing a life without free speech firsthand, Yang says she feels passionately about protecting free speech.  With that said, she still cautions hate speech in any form. 

“Hate speech has consequences.  We should always put human rights first and foremost, protect each other, and create a loving, inclusive and equal community,” she said.