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University of California institutions will implement a number of new steps to curb disruptive protesting on campuses this fall, Dr. Michael V. Drake, the system’s president, announced Monday.
Those steps include “clarifying and reinforcing” policies that prohibit encampments and “unauthorized structures” and forbidding individuals from wearing masks to conceal their identities.
Student and faculty activists have criticized the new rules as attacks on the UC community’s free speech rights.
“I think what they’re trying to do is make more consistent their authoritarian crackdown on these protests,” Graeme Blair, a UCLA faculty member who is a member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine, told KQED, a California public media station. “We plan to challenge these, and I think that some of the policies that they are suggesting are clearly unconstitutional and won’t stand up to legal scrutiny.”
Some also questioned the constitutionality of punishing students for wearing masks, especially when they might be using them to protect themselves and others from airborne diseases like COVID-19.
In a statement to KQED, a spokesperson for the institution said, “If a mask is worn in a context where the wearer is violating policies or laws, officials may determine that the mask is being used to evade identification.”
