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Students For Liberty joins the American Constitutional Rights Union in their call to revoke the “Enhanced COVID Safety Measures” protocol issued by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which ratifies a mandatory bi-weekly COVID-19 testing and the digital monitoring of student movement.
Students For Liberty was disturbed to hear that our leaders attending the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) are being forced by the university to adopt stringent, draconian COVID-19 measures which violate their individual rights. As a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of liberty for all people, we are proud to join the American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU) in opposing these measures.
At Students For Liberty, we believe that private entities have broad rights to enforce safety requirements in their institutions, especially in the middle of a pandemic. We also understand the need to provide optional rapid testing to students, while giving them the tools they need to minimize the spread of COVID-19.
However, UNL is not a private institution and receives ample funding from taxpayers. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the principle that public universities must abide by the Bill of Rights and other constitutional restrictions placed on the government itself. Furthermore, public universities can and have been sued for infringing upon the rights of their students. UNL’s attempts to violate the Constitution are grossly unfair to students, and are an insult to the taxpayers of Nebraska and the United States, who are paying for these provisions.
In UNL’s letter, “Enhanced COVID Safety Measures,” the chancellor describes a set of protocols that clearly crosses the line into infringing on the rights of its students. Rather than making testing optional, a service that would help students mitigate their risk of spreading COVID-19, the university is requiring their students to submit their bodily fluids to regular testing, a clear violation of their medical privacy rights.
However, an arguably greater violation of students’ Fourth Amendment rights comes from an application that students are forced to download to their phones. This application, whose details still haven’t been published, tracks their every movement. Nowhere can students carry their own electronic devices in peace without knowing that their university is watching over their shoulders. We need only look to history to see the consequences of governments tracking their citizens’ movements by requiring checkpoints. This goes far beyond public safety, and likely violates UNL’s own privacy policy.
What’s worse is that these requirements are being forced on students after they have already paid for their semesters. They and their parents/guardians were never given a choice. U.S. citizens and Nebraska residents never received a vote on whether to approve Big Brother overseeing student movements. The timing of this decision prevented any opportunity for resistance before the chancellor imposed these new rules.
In response to the new regulations, several UNL students, including many SFL leaders, have joined the petition with around 500 signatures demanding that these rules be revoked.
Students For Liberty and the American Constitutional Rights Union are joining together in their call to resist these aggressive measures in the hope that either through public pressure or a court injunction, they get reversed.
Students For Liberty and its leaders are dedicated to fighting against totalitarian measures all across the world. We are confident in our ability to resist these measures.
To learn more about our stance on pandemic policies, visit our cluster page by clicking on the button below.
