AVELLINO: Rutgers' free speech rules equal censorship
At the beginning of the year, the Rutgers community was treated to this special nugget by University President Jonathan Holloway on free expression.
"To help us navigate the coming year and beyond, the university has established a centralized website focused on Free Expression at Rutgers," Holloway's message read. "The site affirms our longstanding commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech, reiterates our policies related to student conduct and professional ethics and articulates clear guidelines for free expression."
Schools are responsible for creating guardrails on what forms of protest are and are not acceptable. Just like governments are allowed to institute time, place and manner restrictions on what protests are allowed to happen, so too should a university have clear rules on when protests are allowed to take place, where they can be employed and what activities are allowed at all.
But I am extremely weary of new rules regarding what people are allowed to say and how. To speak freely is to breathe unburdened, and Rutgers needs to have an exceptional reason and a proportional response for silencing its students.
So, I read through the site to get a better sense of what our rules are, and, unsurprisingly, I did not love what I saw.
A lot of recent policy changes are immediate eye-rollers, perhaps none more so than Section 3.0 of the Guidelines for Free Expression on Campus, which limits campus protests to just five venues as listed on the website:
Records Field on the College Avenue campus
The lawn adjacent to the Paul Robeson Cultural Center and Busch Student Center
The Cook Student Center Patio and the patio and grass area on the Nichol Avenue side of the Douglass Student Center
The grass area surrounded by the bus loop in the front of the Livingston Student Center
The size of this list is almost as offensive to our notions of fairness and common sense as its contents. On a campus as spacious and accommodating to human expression as College Avenue, the site of the Voorhees Mall encampment from last year's protests over the Israel-Hamas war, the only space students are allowed to protest is … Records Field? Most students will wonder: Where is that? Do we even have a Records Field?
It is the large grass field behind Brower and adjacent to the College Avenue Parking Deck. Tucked away from the public.
What is the justification for only allowing five spots for nearly 37,000 undergraduate students to exercise their First Amendment rights?
In the frequently asked questions portion of the University's free expression page, the school answers: "With environmental remediation and other construction work underway at Brower Commons in New Brunswick, the University has designated Records Field on George Street as a free expression space on the College Avenue campus."
… Huh?
I can justify a lot of rules. I may disagree with them, but I can still find some simple reason or incentive for plenty of restrictions to be in place. Rutgers getting upset when protests disrupt final exams? Fine, that makes sense. What possible explanation can Rutgers give, besides keeping the troublemakers out of sight and out of mind, for fencing students into a pen next to the parking deck?
Similar questions should be raised about the University's time restrictions on protests, which allow such events to occur only from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Why? Is it acceptable for protests to occur during classes from 10:20 a.m. to 11:40 a.m. but not from 3:50 p.m. to 5:10 p.m.?
Does the Rutgers University Police Department have too much work in the evening to ensure First Amendment activity goes unabated?
The idea that I cannot host a protest in the evening, resulting in, presumably, even fewer people hearing my chant and reading my sign, is so moronic as to border on condescending.
And condescension seems to be the modus operandi for our new free speech policies. When you examine these new rules through that lens, every policy and explanation makes a lot more sense — like the school's justification for its brand new ban on encampments:
"The accommodation was based on mutual respect and included the understanding that they were student-led events and no disruption of University business would occur. As recent disruptive events illustrated, this is no longer the case, and to ensure the safety and security of the Rutgers community, encampments are no longer allowed."
The teenage cattiness of the website's explanation makes it hard not to wonder if every policy change I have outlined is just the result of last year's student encampment. Keep the students off of Voorhees Mall, do not let students protest in the evening and ban tents.
It is insane how many of these policies do not pass a basic sniff test. These are not the makings of a comprehensive and thoroughly discussed free speech policy that works hard to balance students' rights and the University's mission. This is the policy equivalent of a temper tantrum, the final salvo of a fight between Holloway and his agitators over the years that our president has already lost. And he is punishing us for it.
Free speech rules must exist, but they should be narrowly tailored to meet a pressing interest. If you are going to limit my freedoms, you need a really good reason, and your solution has to be privy to my rights. For so many policies, Rutgers has neither.
Noble Avellino is a senior in the School of Arts and Sciences majoring in economics and minoring in political science. Avellino’s column, “Noble’s Advocate,” runs on Mondays.
*Columns, cartoons, letters and commentaries do not necessarily reflect the views of the Targum Publishing Company or its staff.
YOUR VOICE | The Daily Targum welcomes submissions from all readers. Letters to the editor must be between 350 and 600 words. Commentaries must be between 600 and 900 words. All authors must include their name, phone number, class year and college affiliation or department to be considered for publication. Please submit via email to oped@dailytargum.com and eic@dailytargum.com to be considered for publication.
