Lash said the flag was restored to its place around 7 a.m. Friday “as a symbol of our hopes for justice, fairness, and freedom.’’

...

An unknown party set the flag on fire on the night of Nov. 10. On Veterans Day, it was flown from the flagpole at the center of campus.

Soon after, the flag was again lowered to half-staff until Nov. 18, when Lash decided to remove it to “enable discussion” about the anger and fear many people felt following the election. Lash originally said the flag would not return until the spring semester at the earliest.

But Lash quickly realized the flag’s removal was “detracting from dialogue,” drawing sharp criticism.

On Sunday, hundreds of protesters, including some military veterans, called for the flag to be reinstated during a rally on campus.

...

Lash said he views the dispute over the flag as a learning experience.

“This is what free speech looks like,” Lash said in a statement. “We believe in it, we will continue this work on campus, and we will look for ways to engage with our neighbors in the wider community.”

State Representative John Velis — a Democrat and an Afghanistan veteran from Westfield who had called the flag’s removal a “disgrace” — thanked Lash and Hampshire students Friday for “restoring our sacred symbol to its hallowed place.’’ He requested a chance to be part of Hampshire’s continuing dialogue on the meaning of the flag.

“The recent rise in hate crimes and bigotry is certainly distressing, and we must remain vigilant in ensuring that our American principles of equality and justice are upheld,’’ Velis said in a statement. “I encourage you to continue your discourse in a productive manner.”

This is so funny. They write like I murdered someone when all I did was call him Professor Hamburger. By the time I got to "Froot Loops" I was laughing out loud.

...

Gee sent a message to the campus Friday in which he said that he understood the anger of many that Yiannopoulos had been invited and permitted to speak on campus. But Gee said that there was no responsible choice but to let the lecture take place.

"I will always support the decision to bring a speaker to campus and our community -- no matter how controversial. We never want to censor a person’s right to free speech. It is through listening to people who think differently from others that we learn about the world and discover who we really are. And I believe that is one of the most valuable experiences one can have on a college campus," Gee wrote.

But he went on to say that free speech works both ways. Support for free speech, Gee wrote, "does not mean I, as president, lose my First Amendment right to speak up and condemn what is presented. I will never support the tactics of any speaker who brings unsubstantiated and false attacks against a member of our Mountaineer family. It is one thing to share differing opinions that others may find offensive. It is another to be defamatory and target individuals. I personally condemn the tactic this speaker chose to vindictively attack one of our faculty members, Daniel Brewster."

During his talk, Yiannopoulos posted a photo of Brewster on a screen with the label "Fat ------." (It should be noted that Yiannopoulos refers to his campus speaking tour as the "dangerous ------ tour," and he may view "fat" as a greater insult than what is normally a slur for gay people, but he throws around the antigay slur with a different tone than when he is talking about his tour.)

In his talk, Yiannopoulos started by denigrating Brewster's discipline, using rhetoric many conservatives use about some areas of study. "Professor Brewster teaches sociology, which comes in just above gender studies in my rankings of 'burger-flipping majors' -- but not very far above," he said. "I hear he’s fond of bullying conservative students, who often find themselves compelled to leave his class midlecture. I hear he’s hosting a, and I quote, 'multicultural LGBTQ event' at this very second."

Yiannopoulos went on to say that he had heard that Brewster discourages conservative students from expressing their views or punishes them with poor grades. Brewster opted not to answer Yiannopoulos, but his students have said that there are differences of opinion aired in class all the time. What particularly upset many at West Virginia was the way Yiannopoulos kept repeating personal insults while discussing things such as Brewster's Twitter biography and photograph (seen above).

For instance, Yiannopoulos said, "Professor Fat ***’s Twitter profile contains this quote: 'I welcome the fact that students feel safer knowing that I will be an advocate for them and that I am willing to fight for their rights and their inclusion.' Well that’s not true, is it, Professor Stuff Your Face With Froot Loops?"

Responding to Yiannopoulos's comments about Brewster, Gee said that "while the university will always be committed to creating an open forum that supports free speech, we are also strongly committed to keeping our campus and local communities inclusive and safe." Gee added that "for far too long, we have been yelling at each other instead of listening to each other. We use the First Amendment to speak language that hurts rather than heals. We use social media and anonymous emails to tear each other down instead of lifting each other up."

Gee also praised -- and participated in -- a social media campaign to defend Brewster. Using the hashtag #BecauseofBrewster, students and others wrote about the difference he had made at WVU (and elsewhere -- he is a popular speaker with college groups promoting inclusiveness). Gee noted that in the 12 hours after Yiannopoulos's talk, more than 185,000 people saw a social media post praising the professor who had been attacked.

A Catholic college reported a crude Post-it note to city police as a hate crime because it told students to “suck it up” in response to Donald Trump’s election.

First Amendment experts say that while Wisconsin’s Edgewood College can punish students for even constitutionally protected speech, it cannot seek to use police to punish such speech as a crime.

And the police agreed. A spokesman for the Madison Police Department told The College FixThursday that a parole officer and detective already looked into the report and found “no immediate threat.”

Hence, there’s no further case activity and “it’s not an open investigation,” the spokesman said.

...

“[T]hey can discipline students, or even expel them, for speech that is constitutionally protected” because Edgewood is not bound by the First Amendment, he said.

“But police departments are bound by the First Amendment — they can’t arrest or prosecute someone for a supposed ‘hate crime’ that consists solely of protected speech,” Volokh continued. “Edgewood College thus seems to be trying to get the government to punish speech that the government has no power to punish.”

A couple from Minnesota has re-imagined the classic Christmas song "Baby It's Cold Outside" for a 21st-century audience, changing the song's lyrics to emphasize the importance of consent.


Singer-songwriters Lydia Liza and Josiah Lemanski, both from Minneapolis, said they were inspired to rework the song after bonding over a mutual dislike of the original's lyrics, which were penned in 1944 by Frank Loesser. The duet features a man trying to dissuade a woman from leaving a party despite her repeated protestations that she has to go home. "What's in this drink?" is one of the female lines. "What's the sense in hurtin' my pride?" implores the male voice.The song's seeming disregard for the woman's desire to leave never sat well with Lemanski or Liza.

"I've always had a big problem with the song. It's so aggressive and inappropriate," said Lemanski, 25.

Liza, 22, said she felt the same way as her boyfriend.