Speech First, a nationwide organization that works with college students to stand up for the First Amendment and free speech on campuses under law, has officially filed a lawsuit against Virginia Tech University.

The lawsuit is specifically targeted to expose Virginia Tech’s policies regarding “bias-related incidents,” discrimination and harassment against its students, and its oddly specific computer policy, which specifically prohibits the use of school networks for any “partisan political purposes.” The suit also targets Tech’s ban on distributing literature or petitions on campus without first receiving the university’s approval.

Essentially, the University has created a new system of reporting “bias” on campus, and when complaints are made, they are reviewed by a Bias Incident Reporting Team (BIRT). The BIRT team and the complaint process as a whole have been strategically used on campus to specifically target conservative students and report their political opinions as “bias” not welcome in the university setting.

The chapter President of TPUSA at Virginia Tech shared with us, “I personally have been reported through the biased reporting system several times, and students who are involved in a conservative movement know to come to me when they are facing issues due to their opinions. Whether this is receiving a bad grade on a paper, being called into a meeting with the Dean of Students to discuss how their viewpoint is offensive, or being reprimanded in other ways, I know exactly what students face because of university policies. The bias reporting system is our largest concern. This system allows students, professors and community members to anonymously report one another for anything from acts of violence to merely holding opinions that another may disagree with.”

This student and representatives from TPUSA have personally had several meetings with the Dean of Students and other administrative officials at Virginia Tech to identify how conservatives are unfairly targeted by the bias reporting system. Despite this, the University continues to wield the system to punish and harm conservatives to no avail.

We at TPUSA HQ are so excited about seeing free speech championed on campus from a student and litigation perspective! Policies like these at Virginia Tech are often specifically designed to target conservative students and silence them and their viewpoints by any means necessary. Conservative students are blatantly discriminated against every day. It’s time for it to stop!

You can learn more about the lawsuit here, and to learn more about Speech First and its founder Nicole Neily, click here.

To all of the conservative and free-thinking students on Virginia Tech’s campus-we stand with you! Keep fighting for your beliefs and remember there is a huge community of like-minded individuals out there cheering you on!