University of Southern Mississippi Chapter of the Mississippi Civil Liberties Union v. University of Southern Mississippi

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

Twice this Court has been a harbinger of major expansions in the First Amendment rights of students. In Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education, 5 Cir. 1961, 294 F.2d 150, we turned our backs on the old saw that attendance at a university was a privilege granted by the state and was therefore subject to whatever conditions the state sought to impose. Five years later, we said that students’ rights to free expression cannot be curtailed unless that expression “materially and substantially interfere [s] with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of…