Sports fan censorship

Free speech is dead.\nThis last weekend, I was in Indianapolis to watch my younger brother swim in the state swim meet. He won both events he entered even though he broke his foot in the middle of the meet — but that’s not really relevant to this column. The relevant part is that, to support my brother, a couple of friends and I decided to make signs to bring to the meet. The signs were fairly innocuous — one had his name on it, and the other was one of those with a message where the words spell out ESPN.\nWe had taken care to make sure there was no profanity or offensive language on the signs, and we figured our biggest problem would be ensuring that we didn’t block people’s views when we held them up. We were wrong.\nAs my brother was receiving his first-place medal, I noticed a rent-a-cop making his way up the stairs toward us. He climbed over the people in my row and said, “I’m going to need that sign. I saw it earlier, but I didn’t get up here in time.”\nI asked him if he was serious, he said yes, and I threw the signs in his face.\nIn looking back on the incident, I found a fair bit of irony. You see, in the week leading up to the meet, my uncle, who was also there, had been poking fun at me for some of the recent events surrounding the IU basketball program. The main thing he’d commented on was the incident during a game where a fan was asked to remove a shirt that said, “Bring back Bobby!”\n“So, I hear the First Amendment has been suspended in Bloomington?”\nWell, evidently it was suspended in Indianapolis as well.\nThere’s a slight difference between my situation and the situation of the brave soul who dared to summon The General. All I hoped to accomplish was to support my brother, and I thought I did so in a fairly polite way. I know that I’ve seen signs at Assembly Hall that are similar to what I had this weekend, and even some that were maybe a little more provocative — so that’s not an issue on this campus. However, it reeked of preventative overkill. Since the officials didn’t want to judge what signs are legitimate and what signs aren’t, they just took all signs, as well as chest painting and basically anything else one could think of. Sporting events are supposed to be entertainment, but the authorities found a way to suck out all the enjoyment.\nI take more issue, though, with the Bobby Knight shirt. Despite my anger, my signs weren’t really that big of a deal in the long run. That fan, though, was trying, I assume, to make a statement about the state of IU athletics. That’s free speech. That’s the First Amendment. And that’s more than just fun and games. That’s freedom.