A campus free speech advocate and political-correctness watchdog has conferred a backhanded laurel on Colorado’s own Adams State University. The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, announced this week it has bestowed its facetious “Speech Code of the Month” distinction upon the Alamosa-based higher-ed institution for what FIRE deems its over-reaching sexual-harassment policy.

In a press release today that links to the policy, FIRE states in part:

According to the policy, sexual harassment is “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including “verbal” conduct. The university is one of many institutions to employ this unconstitutionally broad definition of sexual harassment, which was set forth as a “blueprint” for schools around the country by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice in May 2013. This definition effectively encompasses any speech of a sexual nature that another person finds subjectively offensive, and makes a tremendous amount of otherwise constitutionally protected speech and expression subject to punishment.

FIRE contends that a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court ruling defines harassment on campus much more narrowly than does the federal Education Department and should prevail in public policy as it is the finding of the nation’s highest court.

“Adams State may think that it must use the ‘blueprint’ definition in order to avoid a potential Title IX enforcement action that puts its federal funding at risk,” said FIRE Vice President of Policy Research Samantha Harris. “But to the extent that the government is requiring schools to maintain this definition, it is doing so impermissibly, in defiance of the First Amendment.”

Adams State earns a “red light” rating for free speech in FIRE’s Spotlight Database, which tracks campus speech codes.

Adams State, in the middle of southern Colorado’s rural and remote San Luis Valley, would seem an unlikely hotbed of “PC” policies on campus. Then again, FIRE’s premise seems to be that the issue can arise on any campus, anywhere. And sure enough, March’s Speech Code of the Month honoree was Pennsylvania’s Dickinson College; February’s was the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Yet, is it fair to single out Adams State when FIRE itself acknowledges the school is “one of many” to employ the same “unconstitutionally broad” standard? And even if Adams State has the right under the Supreme Court ruling to drop the U.S. Education Department policy, can it be blamed for not wanting to stick its neck out and risk losing its federal funding?

We reached out to school communications chief Julie Waechter, who promised to consult the Adams State leadership and follow up with us. We’ll let you know when we hear back from her.

By the way, FIRE’s shot at Adams State comes the same week that firebrand conservative commentator Ann Coulter scrubbed a scheduled appearance at the legendarily liberal University of California-Berkeley, citing safety concerns. FIRE weighed in on that development, too:

This latest success for those willing to threaten or engage in violence in order to silence a campus speaker establishes a genuinely dangerous precedent.