Political correctness gone wild

Elizabeth Price Foley at Instapundit links to an op ed by a retired social worker in the Hartford Courant.

Cynara Stites points out the perversity of a bill passed this week in the Connecticut Senate:

According to Sen. Mae Flexer, D-Killingly, who spearheaded this bill, college students would be required to “say yes” or indicate nonverbally through “physical cues” that they are willing to have sex with another college student.

A major flaw in this proposed legislation is that it would impose a legal requirement that college students engage in a specific type of speech or behavior in a certain situation. Although this requirement is unenforceable, if a university did find a way to enforce it, the university would be infringing upon students’ constitutional rights to freedom of speech. . . .

Sen. Joe Markey, R-Southington, was correct when he said it is “peculiar” for the state to pass a law that applies only to accused students in university disciplinary hearings and not to defendants in criminal courts. College students are not a special class of citizens who are exempt from the Constitution’s protections of freedom of speech, due process and the presumption of innocence for the accused.

This bill is an example of political correctness gone wild. Why did the majority of state senators who voted for this bill, including many lawyers, fail to recognize that the bill has provisions that would be unenforceable and would infringe college students’ constitutional rights? Hopefully, the House will realize that the proposed legislation would not accomplish its proponents’ objectives and would make colleges and universities vulnerable to lawsuits for violating students’ civil liberties.