Dear UVA, you don’t have to turn on the "red light." In April, Adam Kissel—a vice president at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)—wrote UVA Dean of Students Allen Groves to inform him of a few university policies that raised questions about students’ First Amendment rights. According to FIRE’s year-end report [PDF], UVA made the changes necessary to achieve a "green light" ranking—one of only 12 schools to earn the accolade.
"A green light does not indicate that a school actively supports free expression," cautions FIRE’s Spotlight on Speech Codes report. "It simply means that the school’s written policies do not pose a serious threat to free speech."
According to the Washington Post, UVA received the green light for removing restrictions on language from a policy governing Internet use and from examples of sexual harassment listed on the UVA Women’s Center website. Dean of Students Allen Groves also adjusted his "Just Report It" bias reporting system to ensure students that constitutionally protected language would not be held against them, even if reported via the online system.
A few other Virginia schools didn’t fare so well in the FIRE rankings. Both Virginia Tech and Washington & Lee University earned "yellow light" finishes, while the University of Richmond and George Mason University received "red light" rankings.