F.A.C.T. Rally at Delta Kappa Epsilon

On Tuesday morning on the front lawn of the Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) house, approximately 300 students and several members of the media gathered to participate in the Freedom of Association: the Coalition for Truth (F.A.C.T.) Rally. The rally focused on protesting Colgate's Residential Plan, which, according to the official Colgate website, will require all Greek-letter organizations to be based in University housing.

The University plan requires the sale of all Greek letter houses to the University. At the current time, all Greek-letter alumni associations are voting on whether or not to sell their houses to Colgate. Thus far, DKE has posed the strongest resistance to the plan. The president of F.A.C.T., senior Sean Devlin, is a member of DKE.

Devlin, however, has made it clear that the issue does not extend to just DKE or to the Greek system. He feels that this is an issue which effects the entire Colgate campus.

In speaking about the rally in last week's edition of the Maroon-News, Devlin stated that he had hoped "to bring the whole student body together, for the students to rally together for a cause that really affects them. It affects every student on this campus. If one group of students does not have its First Amendment rights respected by the administration, all bets are off. Any student group can be sanctioned."

The issue of First Amendment rights was an important topic at the rally. Much of the recent debate has centered upon the appropriate rights of students at private universities and at Colgate in particular. Many at the rally were there to protest their right to assemble, which they felt was provided to them by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

"I was there to defend my fundamental right as a Colgate student," first-year Mark Bello said. "This transcends the Greek system. The administration is setting no limit as to how far they can go. If the administration can trample one group of students, why can't they trample another group of students that they dislike? They're setting a precedent that anything they don't agree with, they can just go over our Constitutional rights to enforce them."

To begin the rally, each individual in attendance received a F.A.C.T. pin, a pocket Constitution and a copy of Fire's Guide to Free Speech on Campus, a book co-written by Greg Lukanoff, Harvey Silverglate and David A. French, the president of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (F.I.R.E.). French was a speaker at the event. Those in attendance also received a free Dinosaur Barbecue lunch.
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