In February of 2019, YAL Chapter President and Illinois State Chair Dylan Crowl sent a letter to WIU informing them that he would be holding a free speech ball event outside of the school’s free speech zone. The school emailed Crowl back saying that there were no longer free speech zones, despite there being a policy on the school’s website. Crowl requested they remove the policy and, in response, was promised a meeting with WIU’s general council. The council, however, did not confirm a meeting time and stopped responding to Crowl’s calls and emails.

A couple months later Crowl was holding an activism event on campus when he was told by campus detectives to go to the very free speech zone he had been promised no longer existed! Crowl contacted YAL’s Free Speech Director and together they asked FIRE to contact the school on his behalf. FIRE wrote a letter to WIU and was given the same excuse that was given to the WIU students. After getting nowhere with the stubborn school bureaucrats, FIRE released an article criticizing the school’s “Zombie Free Speech Zones” which supposedly were not in existence.

In April of 2020, after a year of harassing the school to change the website, YAL enlisted the help of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). ADF sent a policy demand letter to WIU informing them that if they did not remove the policy from the website they could be subject to legal action. Sure enough, after receiving the letter from ADF and understanding the hurt that could be brought on the bureaucrats by ADF’s team, the school removed the policy from the website. YAL’s consistent pressure finally broke through to the bureaucrats and led to a free speech victory.