On a crooked projection screen inside the Asian Culture Center on Wednesday, students viewed a presentation on First Amendment rights.
The presentation, given by Stacee Williams, director of Student Legal Services at IU, took place at noon.
It outlined details of the First Amendment and certain restrictions the government can place on individual freedoms.
“Part of our mission is education, and part of that is giving information to students so they can make better decisions moving forward,” Williams said.
The first guest arrived at 11:56 a.m. By the time the event started — a few minutes after noon — there were three total guests.
Two of them were part of the Asian Culture Center.
The first guest outside the center to arrive was Neil Klein, a tutor at IU. He heard about the event in a newsletter.
“I thought it was an interesting event in light of everything going on right now,” Klein said.
Williams began by introducing herself while Klein and the other guests sat and ate food provided by Jimmy John’s and Turkuaz Café.
She told them she was excited about this presentation because it was new for her.
She launched into her presentation with a quiz.
It asked how many freedoms were protected by the First Amendment.
The small crowd murmured and reached a quiet consensus of the answer five. Williams informed them they were correct.
The first freedom Williams discussed in her presentation was of religion.
She included complex cases of school-sponsored prayer and other blurry areas of religious freedom.
“There’s a lot of gray area and variation in our constitutional protections depending on your situation,” Williams said.
The guests grew to six after the event had started. The crowd was mostly quiet.
Klein answered most of the questions on the quizzes Williams had spread periodically through her presentation.
Williams, using a joke, explained how the courts consider more than vocal statements to be speech.
“I could get up and do an interpretive dance right now,” she said. “That may be offensive to your aesthetic sensibility, but it is protected under the First Amendment.”
After her lecture on First Amendment protections nationally guaranteed, Williams explained some of IU’s specific policies on assembly.
She informed the students that as long as their protests are peaceful and don’t interrupt school function they are free to assemble.
She gave those in attendance a pamphlet noting IU’s policies on free speech, demonstrations and political campaigns.
She opened the last few minutes up to questions and answers, where she received some questions like what is considered disturbing school functions.
During her presentation, when explaining how courts come to their conclusions, she told her guests about the complicated process, about what they have to weigh and individual rights against government interest.
“Courts do a balancing act,” she said.
