adapted from Kim Davies/Flickr
Students are in a hurry between classes. Petitions are low-stakes and non-binding. And the guy behind the clipboard seems so nice! So maybe we can call the following video a simple demonstration of how people will sign just about anything, right? Right? Because the alternative explanation is that Yale University is rife with young people who are totally cool with repealing the First Amendment.
In under one hour on a main stretch of Yale's campus, video maker Ami Horowitz collected 50 signatures on a petition to say see-ya-later to that whole free speech thing Americans have been yammering on about for a few centuries.
Of course, we don't know how many students declined to sign. And we don't know that those who did actually took Horowitz seriously—Reason's resident Yale alum, Katherine Mangu-Ward, said that student groups there used to circulate fake petitions all the time. Maybe everyone is in on the joke!
And yet… this is the same student body that recently pitched a collective hissy fit over the administration refusing to issue guidance about their Halloween costumes and claimed the job of university staff was "not about creating an intellectual space" but creating safe spaces. And calls to trash the whole U.S. Constitution have become cool in certain lefty circles. Check out the Yale video below and judge for yourself how serious these students seem. (Then try not to weep.)
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