Buttons and bows

Politics are a tricky thing and the line between right and wrong often melts into a murky shade of gray. We are supposed to learn about candidates and endorse the one that we most agree with, ultimately culminating in our vote for them. But on the other hand, we're not supposed to let people know our views, for fear that we might slant them.
Yeah, I think that it's all just dumb. Recently I read an article from The New York Times called "Buttons and Bows" that enraged me. It talked about how teachers, no actually professors (who teach adults mind you) were banned from wearing political endorsement buttons on school campuses. Furthermore they were not allowed, in some cases, to have political bumper stickers on their cars because administrators felt that they might run the risk of influencing students towards one party or the other.
Okay now stop, if I'm the only one that this sounds completely stupid to, then there is a problem. Never mind that this is a flagrant abridgement of the First Amendment, (yeah guys, that's the important one!) but it's just ridiculous in general.
My first problem with this little situation is obvious; if administrators sincerely believe that a professor would ever be so important to me that I would throw my vote away (which is anonymous anyway) on a candidate that I didn't support just because I wanted to conform with them, then they are stupid. Honestly, if I were dumb or impressionable enough to be conforming on the basis of a bumper sticker, I probably shouldn't be voting in the first place. Secondly, even if these 'buttons and bows' were influential on my psyche, in a truly well-balanced campus, I would be equally bombarded with messages.
Yeah, maybe that's the real reason for this problem; campuses attempting to cover up how biased their faculty is. And even if they were an openly one-sided school, like a private Christian school would more presumptively be right-wing, they wouldn't care about the influential messages because practically everyone is voting for John McCain anyway, and if they're not the pressure isn't going to be pushed upon them in the way of harassing promotional buttons.
So, really what this comes down to is stupidity and nit-picking; people at some loser universities have nothing better to do than regulate insignificant rules and make up consequences. If I were a professor at one of these schools, I would wear 26 buttons just to be cute, of course half endorsing Barack Obama and the other half plastered with McCain's face, just to annoy my superiors. I mean really, what repercussions would really result from this ridiculous infraction? They would take away two dollars worth in merchandise from an adult? I don't think so.