Do Law Profs Breach a Commercial Educational Agreement by Wearing T-Shirts with a Social Message?

A group of 1L students recently caused a stir-up at an anonymous law school by posting an anonymous complaint after their criminal law professor wore a “Black Lives Matter” t-shirt “on campus” (not “to class,” apparently).   See the letter and the professor’s great response here.  (For full disclosure, our colleagues on the TaxProf Blog also wrote about the story here ).

Do students, because they enter into a contract with a private law school (or even a public one), have a legitimate reason to complain that their professors wear t-shirts with a socially and legally provocative or at least thought-provoking message?  The students wrote, “We do not spend three years of our lives and tens of thousands of dollars to be subjected to indoctrination or personal opinions of our professors.”

Is this reasonable, in your opinion?  First, this comparison is not apt.  In fact, it is an extreme over-exaggeration that barely needs commenting on.  The students also comment that the “BLM” movement does not have anything to do with the law, which demonstrates the sad state of ignorance about the law and society in which many of our students – and perhaps especially those in conservative areas such as Orange County, California – find themselves (that’s where the anonymous law school is thought to be located).  The movement is clearly about very little but the law and policy.  Second, students can and should expect to get a quality legal education when attending an ABA-accredited law school, but simply because they pay money for it does not entitle them to only hear about the version of the law that _they_ prefer.  In fact, as the professor so correctly notes in his response, the consumer theory should not apply to the content of one’s legal education. In other words, students don’t pay to only hear part of the message.  And as the professor said: students certainly don’t pay us _not_ to have an opinion about the classes we teach (note that the Tshirt was worn in connection with a criminal procedure class).

What are your thoughts on this?  And why does the law school not publish its name?