Recently, a man came to campus with his child in a stroller, set up on the grass beside the plaza and started spouting his opinion to passersby. Some students took issue with his presence, but The Criterion’s stance is a college campus is the perfect place to allow challenging ideas and discussions to take place. It is the path to intellectual growth.

Several complaints were directed Colorado Mesa University’s (CMU) administration because the individual exercised his first amendment rights. While The Criterion is not going to defend his words, we will defend his freedom of speech. After all, popular speech needs no defense. The Constitutional right to free speech is specifically in place to protect unpopular speech.

However, The Criterion has already discussed the need to protect speech in detail. Now, it is time to expand on the need to allow challenging speech and ideas on campus.

The university environment is supposed to be one of growth. This includes intellectual, emotional and social stimulus. This is the place where individuals advance from youth into adulthood and form a solid foundation for who they are ultimately going to become.

Ideologies should be challenged and either cemented or shattered. That can only come about from confronting ideas that greatly differ from those already introduced during childhood. Therefore, if we hide from different views, we hinder our ability to grow.

It is so easy, in the modern climate, to hide from differing viewpoints. All it takes is the declaration that an individual is offensive, intolerant, ignorant or hateful. We throw out labels to dictate the motivation of an individual that disagrees with us, and that allows us to wrap ourselves in the cozy and secure blanket of like-minded ideas.

While that blanket is safe and comfortable, it is also infantile. If we insist on being swathed only in ideas that confirm our established worldview, we never learn if that worldview actually is our own. It may just be what we’ve been sold by individuals we allow to think for us.

The only way to determine the legitimacy of our values is to challenge them against those that are either partially or completely opposite. After being exposed to such values and ideology, we can then reflect on our own views and values. We can choose to defend our own stance or challenge it against new information.

That isn’t an easy process. It’s much more difficult than hiding from opposing viewpoints and taking steps to silence those who can challenge us. However, challenge breeds change and should be welcomed.

That is not to say that such challenge will necessarily change our worldview, but it will change the depth of our conviction to that worldview.

For an example, consider charcoal and diamonds. Both are made of carbon, yet they are extremely different in value. Without getting lost in the weeds on the science of it, the big difference between charcoal and diamonds is that diamonds have gone through extreme pressure and emerged on the other side as a precious material. Charcoal has not.

We can choose to be charcoal by hiding from challenge and levying complaints against those who try to present us with differing views. Or we can enhance our value by putting our worldview through the pressure of new ideas and values.

The college campus is the best place to experience such pressure and change. The Criterion invites our fellow Mavericks to embrace challenge and change rather than hide from it. Choose to become diamonds. Choose intellectual growth. Do so by encouraging free speech on campus rather than trying to shut it down.