Poll: College Students Favor Speech Codes, Trigger Warnings

More than half of college students in a recent poll said they favor speech codes on campus and almost two-thirds think professors should be required to give "trigger warnings" about material that might upset them, according to a recent poll. 

According to the poll:

Schools should have speech codes to regulate faculty and students:

• Yes: 51 percent
• No 36 percent

Require "trigger warnings":

• Yes: 63 percent
• No: 23 percent

Which Amendment protects free speech?

• First: 68 percent
• Another: 32 percent

Does First Amendment protect hate speech?

• Yes: 52 percent
• No: 35 percent

Thirty percent who identify as liberals say the First Amendment is outdated.

The Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt from an upcoming piece from the November issue of New Criterion that quoted the study which was conducted for The William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale University.

Robby Soave of Reason.com called the results "a significant social change."

"[T]he '60s leftists, for instance, properly understood that advocates of radical ideas had to fight for unfettered expression for all in order to guarantee that their own views would be shielded from repression," Soave wrote. "But perhaps campus leftists can no longer imagine a world where their ideas are broadly vulnerable to censorship — they see the First Amendment as something that only racist, bigoted conservatives need."

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