“Ninety percent of political science professors are crazy,” I tweeted after my first day of classes this quarter.

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This was after weathering an amorous story about my professor meeting failed presidential candidate Michael Dukakis at the airport as a young boy, after sitting through a rant from my Ph.D.-educated Latino professor about his accent — and after another professor directly admitted to being a Communist. I was surely missing my favorite professor, who takes sabbatical every winter quarter to serve in our state’s House of Representatives.

Matt Manweller is by far one of the most loved Political Science professors at Central Washington University. He’s sharp as a tack, funny, charismatic — and fair. The qualities that make him a beloved professor also make him an amazing state legislator. He doesn’t fit the stereotypical, liberal mold you would assume of a college professor. Dr. Manweller praises capitalism, limited government, and free speech in his classes — and on the House floor.

Dr. Manweller’s latest bill protects students’ right to free speech on college campuses by taking direct aim at the notion of “safe space.” He doesn’t believe that colleges are intended to be a “safe space,” but rather encourage students to explore new ideas and topics that may make them feel a little uneasy. His bill has five key elements designed to protect free speech: It bans speech codes on campuses, bans free speech zones, bans punishments for so-called micro-aggressions, protects a professor’s right to free speech in professional and personal settings, and promises students fair due process if they’re facing expulsion.

Although I’m personally elated about this bill — trust me, we need it — it’s ludicrous that we’ve degraded our campus culture to the point where this is necessary. Tinker v. Des Moines clarified students’ right to free speech on campus (at least I learned something from Political Science class), so why do we need new, explicit protections for free speech? I asked Representative Manweller why we’re facing this problem again half a century later.

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“We’ve had 30 years of liberal professors hiring liberal professors. It’s created a McCarthy-istic environment where professors and universities feel that they can shut down any speech they don’t like,” he said.

Manweller’s bill carries teeth to help break this liberal culture that has been decades in the making. If made law, universities infringing upon students’ First Amendment rights would be subjected to a $500 or more fine. The bill has the support of every Republican member of the Higher Education Committee.

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When discussing the need for his bill, Manweller cites a syllabus for a class taught by another professor at his own university which implied that words such as “man,” “woman,” or “American” couldn’t be used in class for fear of offending students. Manweller’s colleague threatened to mark down or even fail students who used words such as “illegal alien,” “tranny,” or referred to men and women as “male or female.”

[lz_infobox]This piece is part of a CampusZette series exploring the culture, oddities, and experiences of students on college campuses through their eyes.[/lz_infobox]

As a student and as an American, this mix of political correctness and word-policing scares me. I hope that legislators in Washington and in other states follow in Manweller’s footsteps to reverse this trend.

“Academic institutions are created around the Greek notion of the Agora or what Americans call ‘the marketplace of ideas.’ But when the marketplace becomes a monopoly, when unpopular voices are silenced, when dissent is crushed, the very purpose of a university dies,” Manweller added.

Elizabeth Catterson is a senior at Central Washington University.