AND NO QUALIFIED IMMUNITY FOR THE OFFICIALS, WHICH REALLY MAKES THIS NEWS: U Tenn Pharmacy School Pays $250K Settlement for Trying to Expel Student for Sexually Themed Tweets. “For years, colleges around the country have wielded professionalism codes against students for their expression even when the student’s speech has no bearing on their ability to succeed in a given field. Kim’s posts were wholly separate from the college, as her accounts operated under a pseudonym and did not reveal her then-identity as a student.”

Related: Universities That Target Their Students’ Free Speech Should Have To Pay A Public Price For It. “It’s shocking how audacious public universities can be about this sort of thing — the extent to which they will pursue “investigations” or disciplinary acts against students for what would clearly seem to be protected speech (given that public university students are generally protected by the First Amendment). But “clearly seems to be” can take you only so far if you don’t have access to legal recourse. Diei was very fortunate to have pro bono help from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. . . . A lot of universities act similarly to cowardly, risk-averse corporations. Their response to the sort of whiny narc who ‘reports’ someone’s social media posts sometimes defaults to ‘OH MY GOD WE ARE SO SORRY WHAT CAN WE DO TO MAKE YOU FEEL LESS OFFENDED??’ That is: They’re not going to do the right thing out of loyalty to their students, or out of a principled stance on free speech. They’re going to do the right thing when it becomes too expensive, from a monetary or public-relations perspective, to do the wrong thing.”