By Jim Brown
April 28, 2005

(AgapePress) - A bill in the California Legislature calls on the State university system to develop and implement guidelines that protect the academic freedom rights of students on campus.

Senate Bill 5, the "Student Bill of Rights" legislation sponsored by Senator Bill Morrow of Oceanside, requires colleges and universities to ensure that students are graded on their subject knowledge and not on the basis of their political or religious beliefs. The bill calls for curriculum and reading lists that include dissenting sources and viewpoints, and it also prohibits any political or religious indoctrination on the part of faculty members or administrators.

Morrow says there comes a point when educators "cross from teaching into indoctrination," and indoctrination is something he has "a real problem with." As a state legislator, he says one of his main concerns is whether California colleges have sufficient rules and guidelines in place to deal with the problem when that line gets crossed.

But even if many of the state's colleges and universities do have such guidelines in place, the senator notes, another concern he has is "whether or not they are implementing those rules or simply ignoring them." The purpose of SB 5, he says, is to address widespread academic abuses such as grade retaliation, biased curricula, and other kinds of political and religious censorship and intimidation that students on many campuses report as all too common occurrences.

"The State of California, by this bill, is going on record to all of the state colleges," Morrow says. State taxpayers fund these schools, he points out, "and we're their elected officials in that respect -- saying [to officials at schools where such abuses occur] 'There is a problem -- fix it.'"

The purpose of the Student Bill of Rights legislation, Morrow adds, is not to indict every professor, every class, or every administration; but rather, it is to prevent conservative or Christian students and others from being treated as second-class citizens on campus. SB 5 is needed, he contends, because current rules in place to protect the academic freedom and rights of college students are clearly insufficient.