Graduate students and professors at the University of Illinois no longer need worry that a bumper sticker supporting John McCain — or Barack Obama or Ralph Nader or anyone else, for that matter — puts them in violation of the state’s ethics law, the university system’s president, B. Joseph White, said in an e-mail message to faculty and staff members this afternoon. The university will “preserve, protect, and defend” the constitutional freedoms of speech and assembly of every employee, as well as academic freedom, he wrote.

The e-mail message followed recent statements by university and state officials that had raised concerns about whether professors — and maybe even students — could legally attend a political rally or wear a campaign button on a university campus. Mr. White clarified today that employees could attend rallies as long as they did so on their own time, and could wear partisan gear while neither on duty nor “in the workplace.” He added that previous statements by university officials were not setting out official policies of the university, but just familiarizing employees with the state law. —Charles Huckabee