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Originally Posted by Drolefille
In reading around this issue I found some suggesting that the language of constitutional rights has made its way into the usage even among non-government actors despite the fact that the law hasn't necessarily been taken that far.
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The language may have well made its way into that kind of usage. Frankly, that's irrelevant legally. The Constitution is a document designed to serve a specific purpose: to define the framework, powers and limits on powers of the government. The Bill of Rights serves a specific purpose as well: to enumerate certain individual rights that the government is required to respect. To say that private citizens or private institutions are required by the Constitution to respect those rights as well is more than taking the law further; it's a foundational shift in the nature of constitutional law.
I think you may be right as to the practicalities of it. And I'm not suggesting that this means private institutions are able to "violate rights" willy-nilly. What I'm saying is that any obligation to respect individual rights must come in another way, such as when Congress makes it a crime to violate civil rights or attaches strings to receipt of federal funds. And when one seeks to have a private institution respect rights, we have to remember it's not constitutional rights that we're talking about.
As for FIRE, I don't know much about them either, though I guess I'll admit a natural skepticism. (And just because a school backed down doesn't mean FIRE was right. It can just as easily mean that the school decided the fight wasn't worth it.)