Project Arch came through for Ramapo students with another exciting event in Friends Hall last week. The organizers held the event to celebrate democracy and every American’s right to exercise their freedom of speech and expression, specifically focusing on the power of words.
According to their website, Project ARCH, or the Alliance of Roadrunners for Civic Honor, is “a student-led grassroots initiative that aims to ensure local voting accessibility, youth engagement, and encourage increased civic engagement amongst the Ramapo College student body.”
The Freedom of Speech Fair was a two-hour tabling and panel session dedicated to highlighting the value of free speech on college campuses and across the nation. The panelists — Professor Kaitlin Sidorsky, Professor Peter Campbell and Professor Jeffrey Ellsworth — covered a variety of topics, ranging form the decline in communal interactions that has limited speech and thought in the modern century, as well as the importance of free speech for students to advocate for their constitutional rights, especially when dealing with situations where they feel that their speech may be infringed upon.
Free speech is included in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and yet its value to the American people did not come into fruition until later in history, with pivotal cases such as Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) establishing that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
American history has shown repeatedly the relevance of free speech to college students and larger members of society, concepts replicated in the ongoing conversation of censorship and book bans in American public schools and libraries, with the debate centered around challenges to intellectual freedom.
The event was Project ARCH’s largest event of the year, working to show an underlying culture at Ramapo College to preserve an open community where students are able to express free thought, and grow as learners before going out into the larger world as emboldened free thinkers and lifelong learners.
Liz Mendicino, a junior law and society and communication arts major and co-founder and co-president of Project ARCH played a large role in the planning and running of the event.
“The Freedom of Speech Fair is an event that I am so passionate about and proud of. It is so crucial for students to understand what their right to speech means and why they should exercise it,” Mendicino said. “As an organization we aim to make information about civics as accessible as possible, and this event helps us to further our mission.”
Campbell, who teaches Theater History and Criticism in the school of Contemporary Arts, highlighted the value of this when working towards artistic expression. Sidorsky, who instructs in the School of Humanities and Global Studies, built off of this concept, highlighting that free speech also protects past speech, including the right to have plays and expressions using historical texts such as scripts, emphasizing that free speech is needed not only for the protection of current rights but the preservation of past and future speech as well.
Several other clubs from Ramapo set up tables at the event in support of Project ARCH, including the Student Government Association and RCNJ Democratic Club. Enactus and Phi Alpha Delta also were co-sponsors at the event.
To find more information about Project ARCH and their upcoming events, visit https://archway.ramapo.edu/project/home/.
jcaramag@ramapo.edu
Additional reporting by Brigid Keating
Featured photo by Sarah Glisson
