Hmmm...sorry to disagree, I am not sure I am disagreeing on anything here really...in the South and Mid-west it may be different from what you say, we have been more 'open' when things dealing with religion and more traditional are presented (but we allow everything, as it should be). During the Christmas holiday music (REAL Christmas music) is even played on loud speakers across our campus (that is VERY taboo at a lot of places)...we are the 2nd biggest state funded school in TN behind UTK. There are plenty of things presented dealing with the values you are outlining but also gay and lesbian groups are allowing to have meetings and open forums too...honestly, I have always likes the balance here. I do know there are perameters for 'gathering peacefully' on our campus too. We do a pretty good job of controlling that stuff, it is rare you would see that kind of thing here (riots, etc); most of ours students are way too busy with work and school to play 'grab ass' at an out of control forum like that. The one thing I really did like about doing grad work in Austin is that campus put up with NO shenanigans ranging from out of control protests to student cheating, there was a staff and Dean's office to deal with that stuff; they have to do this with over 50,000 students attending.

Second. correct if I am wrong but Columbia is a private institution like NYU and several other campuses in Manhattan (I had looked into Columbia to do grad work, it is outrageously expensive, like Harvard or Yale). Private and public campues REALLY run things differently and quite frankly I left a job a big private U to come to a public U.

No arguing really but private and public schools really run things differently and Columbia did what they did; this original story really never even caught my radar because of that.