1st Amendment free food festival at PLU

Our award-winning PLU student chapter of SPJ is holding a First Amendment Free Food Festival on Tuesday, October 9 to exchange free food for First Amendment rights. Here are the basics:

First Amendment Free Food Festival
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Red Square - Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA
For more info., e-mail spj@plu.edu. Here's how it works:

•  PLU’s Red Square will be laden with food
•  Students will receive a “passport” into this free-food area, which will be designed to resemble a foreign country – a place where the First Amendment doesn’t exist. These passports will include the text to the First Amendment.
• To get a passport, students must first sign a waiver acknowledging that they surrender their First Amendment rights in exchange for a tasty free meal, and that they’ll obey uniformed students acting as guards.
• As they wait in line, students will witness a number of performance pieces. Planned and rehearsed beforehand, these will include a prayer circle broken up by uniformed guards (because there’s no freedom of religion) and the harassment of reporters trying to interview them (because there’s no freedom of the press).
•  As they eat their free lunch, students will experience their own denial of First Amendment rights. For example, as groups of friends sit together at the tables provided, uniformed guards will order them to break into smaller groups (because there’s no right to assembly here).
• Some students won’t receive the food or the portions they requested. They will be directed to a Complaint Officer, who will dismiss them with a wave (because there’s no right to petition for a redress of grievances).
•  Student groups and campus leaders will be invited to recruit and speak, but they’ll be escorted outside the free-food area (because there’s no freedom of speech).
•  As students leave, PLU student media will interview them about what they learned, and a slideshow will be posted on PLU’s Society of Professional Journalist website.

Can we teach college students about the First Amendment by starving with their stomachs and working our way up to their brains? We’re going to try it on a little- known holiday called Constitution Day.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Please join the journalism students of PLU to support our First Amendment!