(December 11, 2007) — Just this past month, I was at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. During my short, three-day stay, I was able to get a good sense of what it feels like to be a part of the college atmosphere. College was far more impressive than I had expected—from students enjoying leisurely activities such as tennis and jogging to listening to lectures in grandiose halls that looked like Hogwarts from Harry Potter. But of the many great qualities, one that stood out the most to me was the complete freedom of speech, which, unfortunately, rarely happens here at Clark. Recently at Hopkins, a bill was passed by the Student Council, which called for Hopkins administrators to protect all ideas, regardless of whether one agrees with them or not. For years, students worked hand-in-hand to tackle the vague free speech policy of “Principles for Ensuring Equity, Civility and Respect for All” and at last gained their freedom to complete free expression just this past month. To me, even this very idea of challenging the administration and standing up for their First Amendment rights seemed admirable. Then I thought to myself, gee, wouldn’t it be nice for me to practice just as much freedom back home… Though we high school students, just as any college student would, technically have the same freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution, there seems to be an “unspoken barrier” that limits us from expressing complete thoughts. And though a 1969 Supreme Court case, Tinker v. Des Moines, ensures our First Amendment rights as students in a U.S. public school, why do I, the editor of the Opinion section, never have enough courage to step out of the box? No wonder some Clark students refer to the Chronicle as “Mr. Dall’s paper.” It probably has a lot to do with the fact that we writers are too concerned with keeping our readers—the students and the administration—happy. And I think it’s time for a change. At the very least, our fear of offending those few readers should not be the reason to stop us from writing. Although it is important not to go overboard and blatantly offend particular groups of people, I also think the only way we can make our newspaper truly “ours” is for us to practice our full rights. It’s about time for us to distinguish legitimate expression of ideas from defamatory speech.