Recall for a moment the wave of passionate student activism on college campuses in the latter half of the twentieth century. At the core of the various causes that were advocated for was the desire to be heard and to speak, to be able to freely express dearly held ideas regardless of their acceptance by society and share such ideas with peers. Campus activists are still fighting today; but, in a grim twist of irony, they are pushing

back in the opposite direction of their predecessors. They do so under the guise of creating “safe spaces”, supposedly intended to shield the vulnerable minds of students from ‘dangerous’ speech.
The concept of safe spaces, defined as areas where one can go to be free of ‘troubling’ or ‘triggering’ ideas and speech, raises numerous red flags when examined. Perhaps foremost is the constitutional issue of the limitation of free expression. The First Amendment, as most Americans are likely familiar with, explicitly disallows “abridging the freedom of speech” (as quoted from the Bill of Rights). Exceptions do indeed exist, such as in the cases of remarks that are overtly intended to incite violence and slanderous statements.
Beyond such restrictions, however, speech in the public sphere cannot legally be regulated in any way, shape or form. It thus follows that, seeing as universities are inherently public areas to their students, no communal area on campus can be designated as an area in which any certain speech is limited. This is a simple enough legal fact,

yet it is one that proponents of what essentially amounts to censorship fail to grasp.
College campuses have traditionally been dedicated to the exchange, discussion and debate of ideas, which is an important role to play. An essential, valuable lesson students should learn from college is that their views will not always be met with agreement; they will inevitably be confronted with other individuals holding different viewpoints. When they do, they should be capable of both defending their own stances and understanding the views of others standing in opposition.
Practice doing so can only serve to strengthen their ability to defend their positions and debate vital issues with their peers. None of the aforementioned skills will ever be learned by constantly shirking away from so much as a slightly oppositional opinion. Any sort of learning experience can seldom occur if one simply refuses to be exposed to new ideas and engage with their advocates of new ideas.
This is not to trivialize actual stress- or anxiety-related episodes. If

a student does indeed happen to be genuinely overwhelmed by someone else’s expression of their views, they have every right to remove themselves from the situation and find somewhere to calm themselves. Any private area, such as the student’s dorm room or apartment, can be utilized to distance themselves from speech by others they find troubling – again, it is entirely within their rights to do so.
Nonetheless, the proverbial line is drawn both by the Bill of Rights and by common sense when any individual tries to expand their private, ‘safe’ area into the public sphere. The free exchange of ideas cannot nor should not ever be suppressed for any reason in public areas. This is an important tenet of American culture that has woefully been forgotten by many individuals, hailing from all political creeds. Alarmist as it may sound, make no mistake – the right to free expression is under a brutal assault from both sides of the political spectrum in modern times.