FREE SPEECH — The national Young Americas Foundation cites four California "PC Campus" episodes among its year-end Top 10 Abuses of 2008.

  1. A student at Yuba College in California was sent an ultimatum by the school’s president: discontinue handing out gospel booklets or face disciplinary action and possibly expulsion. . .
  2. The First Amendment, is it a bestowed right given from above and protected by our government or a meaningless, antiquated concept to be disposed of? If you’re the folks at the College of Alameda in California, you’d pick the latter. How else do you explain their threatening to expel a student who prayed on campus? . . .
  3. For decades, kindergarten classes in the Claremont district of California have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as Pilgrims and Indians and sharing a feast. Harmless, eh? Apparently not. . .
  4. When eco-fanatics at UC-Berkeley illegally saddled themselves in trees on campus and hurled urine and feces to block the construction of a multi-million dollar athletic facility, probably the last thing they expected was to be called racists. . .

On the other hand, list author Jason Mattera is not necessarily the best spokesman for First Amendment freedoms, according to one freelance journalist who tried to cover the 2006 Conservative Student Conference.

I went to the  conference, as a reporter for The Washington Monthly, to engage with conservative ideas and continue the research on college organizing that I had been doing all summer. I also agreed to blog on the event for campusprogress.org. But it was not to be. Two events and three posts after Custer’s opening remarks, I was approached by YAF’s spokesman, Jason Mattera, on my way to see Newt Gingrich. “Who do you work for?” Mattera demanded, with a touch of petulance. “The Washington Monthly,” I told him. “Are you writing for anyone else?” “I’m blogging for Campus Progress.”
    And that did the trick. “There’s the elevator,” Mattera pointed. “I can have one of my interns push the down button.”

(Link aded.)