The university will not expel them for what they said. The university will expel them because they violated the student code of conduct or created a hostile environment or some such reason. So the First Amendment won’t enter into it and the students who were expelled will have no legal recourse.
Case law/precedents are clear on this: Public Universities have a very high, almost impossibly high, bar to cross when it comes to expelling someone for speech.
“Hostile environment” may be an easy trigger to pull to get the punks off campus right away, but it’s going to be next to impossible to defend in court. Especially since the offending speech was made on a privately chartered bus going to a private function.
To add, Boren is justifiing the expulsion by calling the comments “threatening”
Fair enough, but that standard has to be evenly applied under the law. As Volkhov point out, that standard applies pretty easily to pictures of Malcolm X with the M14 and the “By Any Means Necessary” caption. Hope no one on OU has one of those hanging in their dorm room ...