The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is laying the smackdown on the University of California - Santa Barbara for its failure to maintain viewpoint neutrality in the funding of a proposed speech by conservative author and activist David Horowitz.
What's more, the UCSB student government was caught in a series of outright lies in attempting to obfuscate the fact that they denied funding to the event on the basis of Horowitz's views. According to FIRE, after the UCSB College Republicans made an appeal to a denied funding request, a second funding board ultimately reduced the group's granted amount even further because of public objections to the content of Horowitz's views.
Of course, there's no way to put the cat back in the bag in these circumstances. Once a student government goes out of its way to say it is using unconstitutional means to silence expression or to politically skew open forum funding on campus, they can't rewrite history for their own convenience.
Unless you let them get away with it. Nothing is more common than student governments at public institutions overstepping the limits of their power to create a chilling effect on conservative political speech and activity. Nothing, except perhaps, for conservative students unfortunately resigning to accept this bias or abuse.
