DOVER Del.
The University of Delaware has come under fire by a civil rights group that claims the school is trying to force dormitory residents to adopt university-approved ideologies on moral and social issues.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said the university’s residence life education program amounts to an “Orwellian” attempt at thought control that violates students’ rights to freedom of conscience and freedom from compelled speech.
“FIRE writes to dozens of schools each year in defense of students’ individual rights, but we have never encountered a more systematic assault upon individual liberty, dignity, privacy and autonomy of university students than this program,” FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy, Samantha Harris, wrote in a letter sent Monday to UD President Patrick Harker.
FIRE officials called for the program, whose goal is for students to attain “citizenship,” to be dismantled immediately. They asked the university to respond no later than Nov. 5 “because of the severe and ongoing rights violations.”
UD spokesman Neil Thomas said officials were reviewing the letter.
FIRE president Greg Lukianoff said the group began looking into the university’s residence hall program after being contacted by a parent and a professor, and that it also has spoken to several students.
