This Slate article has been making the rounds. It argues that campus speech codes are defensible in large part because college kids really are still  kids, in a way. They have bad impulse control, underdeveloped brains, and thus need paternalism for their own protection.

But even if all of the article’s premises are true, it doesn’t establish its conclusion. It fails in the way that many arguments for regulation, paternalism, and censorship fail. In short, an argument for regulation doesn’t end with a demonstration of the need for regulation. It ends by showing that suitable regulation is actually feasible at sufficiently low cost.

 It’s one thing to say that College Kid Karly could use some paternalism. It’s another to say any of the college administrators out there are the people to do the job. Given that perverse incentives college administrators face, and given the public choice problems inherent in staffing these offices, I don’t want to give administrators the rights to create speech codes. It’s one thing to say that if colleges were staffed by smart, benevolent, competent justice fairies, then the fairies should get to devise speech codes for students. It’s another to say that actual administrators–people who have their own agendas, agendas often in conflict with the mission of the university or with good pedagogy or with students’ interest–should do so.