On February 7th, 2019, students at PCC held a “Free ‘Pot’ Brownies” event on their Portland Campus. This event, containing no illicit drugs, used individually wrapped cosmic brownies in a cooking “pot” as a way to open a discussion about the harms to liberty that have come from the drug war.

The students were approached by campus security who quickly told them that they must take their display down. The students were not even able to keep the sign they had made after marking out the “pot” on the sign and replacing it with “speech:” “Free Speech Brownies.”

The chapter president and YAL State Chair contacted YAL’s Director of Free Speech who connected them with FIRE. FIRE quickly crafted a letter stating the unconstitutional actions of the security guards. The school informed FIRE that the security guards and campus administrators had incorrectly enforced the school’s policy. FIRE secured confirmation from the school that they had added Free Speech Training to the administrators’ yearly orientation. Now, students have much less to fear from administrators enforcing policies that don’t exist.