I am going to begin writing this op-ed by pointing out the obvious: Stanford University is a private institution. As a private school, Stanford may not be obliged to grant full first amendment rights to its students.

The first amendment bans Congress from abridging freedoms of speech, press and the right to peaceful assembly. Every day in classes, meetings and Stanford events, we are allowed to exercise these rights. If the administration chose to ignore these rights forcibly by, say, employing a professor who docked points off a grade every time a student disagreed with him or her, we as the student body would have to stand up and demand change.

Likewise, Stanford would be going against its own history of encouraging citizenship through the act of peaceful assembly if it began banning protests. Be it through demonstrations or petitions, Stanford has appeared open to allowing students to challenge policies and beliefs.

A group of students is organizing an event called “The 3 Ex-Terrorists.” The event will be controversial. The topics of terrorism, the Middle East, Palestine and Israel raise strong feelings all around.

Stanford students are not afraid of controversy. During winter quarter, students bombarded the campus with calls to divest from Israel. Last spring, many participated in a protest against the Bush presidency during the president’s visit. John Edwards incited students with a call to action.

All of these events were student led. All these events were covered by the press.

The planning of the 3 Ex-Terrorists event has been fast and difficult. We were told by the Risk Management Department that we had to limit the event to only people with Stanford ID’s for “security reasons.” We don’t know the criteria used to assess risk, but we wanted the talk to occur, so we acquiesced. We were consistently assured by the administration that this is normal because this is not a community event; it is a Stanford student event.

We were then told that there would be no video or photography allowed. Though we did not understand the problem, we acquiesced.

Finally, this week we were told that the press is not allowed to attend the event. The reason — this is a Stanford event.

At what point does limiting the attendance of a student event become censorship?

The free flow of ideas is necessary to the development of educated opinions, and we need to demand our rights to hear different views. We need to ensure that the next generation of Stanford students will be allowed to participate in the free flow of ideas. We need to challenge the administration whenever it stifles opposing views from being heard.

If you agree that we need to maintain open dialogues on campus, send an email or letter to John Hennessy at hennessy@stanford.edu saying that you support full media access to newsworthy campus events. We may not be granted rights, so, on occasion, we must fight to obtain them.

Megan Reiss ‘07 is the president of the Stanford College Republicans. She can be reached at mreiss@stanford.edu.