Indiana U Board Doubles Down on Protest Restrictions

In April, faculty members, student protesters and others denounced Indiana University president Pamela Whitten and other IU leaders for changing—overnight—a 55-year-old policy that had guaranteed broad protest rights on the flagship Bloomington campus’s Dunn Meadow.

Among other things, the last-minute policy changes banned from that historic demonstration site all structures—including tents—that didn’t have prior university approval. When students set up a planned pro-Palestine encampment the morning after the changes, university leaders called in Indiana state troopers. Officers zip-tied and arrested protesters as police snipers looked on from nearby rooftops.

Now, university leaders are again being accused of an 11th-hour policy change and further limiting protest rights. Last month, the Indiana University Board of Trustees proposed new protest limitations affecting not just Dunn Meadow at Bloomington but all IU campuses. On Monday, the board voted 6 to 3 to approve the policy, despite pushback—including criticism that such a change should not be made over the summer, when so much of the university community is away.

Limiting ‘Expressive Activity’

The new policy bans camping that’s not part of a university event; prohibits “expressive activity” outside of 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.; limits water-soluble chalk to sidewalks; forbids affixing “signs and symbols” to the ground, university buildings, flagpoles and other structures; bans “light projections” without university approval; and forbids temporary “structures and/or mass physical objects” without university approval, which must be requested at least 10 days in advance.

The policy says students who violate it could face punishments up to expulsion. Employees could face ramifications up to firing, depending on the seriousness of the violation.

The changes take effect Thursday, which may spell an end to the ongoing Dunn Meadow encampment and head off possible future encampments during the fall semester: After police cleared the spring encampment, some protesters reconstituted it and are still camping there today. Bryce Greene, a spokesperson for the Indiana University Divestment Coalition and a third-year Ph.D. student in informatics, said the university never seemed to rescind its April policy change but stopped enforcing it.

Sandy Washburn, an IU Bloomington research scholar who protested against the board passing the new policy, said in an interview it was crafted and passed when faculty members are traveling and otherwise predisposed, “with very little time or effort, if you will, for input for faculty or students.” Alongside affecting the university as a whole, she said the new policy strips Dunn Meadow “of any special designation.”

Not all professors agree that the vote came without sufficient notice or input, however. Philip Goff, the IU Indianapolis Faculty Council president and an American studies professor, said university leaders let him know the policy was under development in April, and his campus formed a faculty, staff and student task force in early May that began providing input.

“IU needed a policy that governs all of the campuses and we just didn’t have one,” Goff said. The final policy “took into consideration a lot of our concerns. Not all of them, but it was softened between its first draft and then the final draft.”

IU’s administration didn’t grant an interview request about the vote. Mark Bode, university spokesperson, said via email that Tony Prather, general counsel, “said he reached out for comment from 31 representatives of 22 stakeholder groups across the university (including all nine campuses). Over 200 pages of feedback were reviewed by the General Counsel’s Office and given to board members. Drafts of the policy were also benchmarked against Big Ten and other peer schools.”

The three no votes Monday came from board members Kyle S. Seibert, a student, and Donna B. Spears and Vivian Winston. The meeting was not live-streamed.

‘Saddened’

About a week before the Dunn Meadow encampment clearing in April, IU Bloomington faculty members had already voted no confidence in Whitten, along with other administrators, following multiple academic freedom controversies. Washburn said that Whitten should be ousted for her handling of the Dunn Meadow encampment. Instead, “the board is condoning this stuff by not terminating her.”

Two incidents that faculty members cited in their written no-confidence petition were related to pro-Palestinian speech. Those were the university’s banning of associate professor Abdulkader Sinno from teaching this past spring and summer, after he booked space on campus for a Palestine Solidarity Committee–hosted event, and its cancellation of a long-planned art exhibition by Samia Halaby, a Palestinian American abstract artist.

Russ Skiba, an IU Bloomington professor emeritus and co-founder of the statewide University Alliance for Racial Justice, said Monday’s vote saddened him. He said the board rejected four proposed amendments to the policy, including one that would have made calling in police a last resort for enforcement. With the amount of force the police used in April, Skiba said, “I think we were really lucky. We could have been another Kent State very easily.”

Skiba added that W. Quinn Buckner, board chair, said during the meeting that the university needed a balance between free expression and safety, “and I absolutely agree with him on that.” But the board “made a firm choice to limit freedom of expression severely on the campus in favor of the perceived need for safety.”

Buckner, who did not return a request for comment, said in a statement, “In order for free speech for all to flourish, we needed to clarify our policies so people clearly understand the allowable time, manner and place for free expression. We can’t let one person or group’s expression infringe on the rights of others, disrupt learning experiences for our students or interrupt regular university business.”

To Skiba, there was never any evidence the Dunn Meadow protest was unsafe. “When you see the huge uprising of faculty and student opposition to the expressive activity policy, it’s a little bit disingenuous to say, ‘We’re protecting you’ when the entire campus is saying, ‘We don’t want to be protected this way,’” he said.

What will happen to the student encampment protest now? Greene said students will continue to organize, but their tactics will depend on many things, including their organizational capacity and the campus climate.

The new policy is the latest example in “a long line” of the university retaliating against pro-Palestinian speech, Greene said. Still, “The students are undeterred, and we continue to keep fighting.”