First Amendment Day

Freedom Forum Conference Center, Carroll Hall

Ethics Bowl: How Should Public Schools Accommodate Transgender Students?
California has enacted legislation ensuring transgendered students the same opportunity as all other students to participate in all school activities and programs. The statute, the first of its kind in the nation, requires schools to allow transgendered students to use all facilities (including restrooms and locker rooms) that match their gender identity, rather than their sexual identity. In contrast, a bill proposed in Utah would require students either to use only the restroom that corresponds to their sexual identity (documented by a birth certificate or doctor’s examination) or to use a separate restroom set aside for transgendered students that must be provided at a student’s request. What is the best policy with respect gender identity and use of restrooms? The UNC Ethics Bowl Team will debate this and related questions, and then the audience will be invited to join the discussion. The Ethics Bowl Team is coached by Joshua Blanchard.

Each year, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill celebrates First Amendment Day. This campus-wide, daylong event is designed to both celebrate the First Amendment and explore its role in the lives of Carolina students. Students and other members of the university community read from banned books, sing controversial music and discuss the importance of each of the rights protected by the First Amendment, the need to be tolerant when others exercise their rights and the public university’s special role as a marketplace of ideas. First Amendment Day is observed during National Banned Books Week.

First Amendment Day is organized by the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy.