I am horrified at the Interim

I am horrified at the Interim Expressive Activity Policies. These policies will substantially limit free speech, cultivate an atmosphere of fear and mistrust, and further alienate the student population. This is absolutely counter to Cornell's theme year of "freedom of expression."

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The interim expressive activity policy fails Cornell core values

My name is Dr. Alexander Livingston (Government) and I write to submit my remarks on the interim policy published in today's Cornell Daily Sun into the record of the University Assembly. The university's conduct in recent days offers compelling reasons to think this policy must be revoked. It can only fail students, staff, faculty, and the very core value of free expression it claims - mistakenly - to advance.  I submit these comments as both a member of the Cornell community and a political scientist with expertise in the field of democracy and dissent. 

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This past Thursday, some hundred students orchestrated a peaceful “die in” in Mann library in protest of the University’s financial ties to companies profiting from Israel’s indefinite occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Students lay motionless on the library floor and read out the names of some of the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in the conflict in Gaza. The protest was cleared by campus police within ten minutes. An unspecified number of students who participated in the protest now could be facing disciplinary review by the University. 

Recent years have seen a diverse and creative set of student protests at Cornell. Students occupied Day Hall to demand the University cut its contracts with Starbucks, blocked traffic on East Avenue to shame the University for its morally odious investments in fossil fuels and reenacted the 1969 occupation of Willard Straight Hall to demand greater hiring of faculty and staff of color, better mental health support for students and the creation of an anti-racism institute. The University administration did not simply tolerate these disruptive actions; they listened to students and responded. All three protests played a role in changing University policy. Cornell has committed to ending its partnership with Starbucks, to divesting from fossil fuels and launched an enormous anti-racism initiative transforming curriculum, research and student support. 

Why was this time different?

Thursday’s “die in” was the first test of the Interim Expressive Activity Policy introduced two weeks ago. The policy reiterates a set of existing policies defining the boundaries of free assembly and speech on campus and introduces a whole series of new ones. These include a stipulation that any protest over 50 people receive University pre-approval, narrowly restrict the use of amplified sound to a one-hour window and only in specific locations, forbid the use of paper or cloth for any sign or banner larger than 8×11 and bar the use of candles or any placards held on sticks. Students who assembled on the Agriculture Quad and lay on the floor of Mann Library could face disciplinary sanction for violating this policy. 

It should be noted that all of the above protests would now be prohibited on campus under this policy. The hundreds of students who engaged in them would now risk similar disciplinary review. 

Cornellians should be very concerned about this turn of events. These new rules are ripe for abuse to repress speech the administration considers inconvenient. The rules effectively tell students, staff and faculty alike that the administration will be exercising heightened surveillance of your political expression, has crafted new tools for making it harder for you to participate in the political life of campus and is not afraid to use its disciplinary powers to enforce its will. And all of this under the rubric of “the year of free expression.”

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In a statement released after the protest on Thursday, the Office for University Relations illustrates the strange doublespeak required of the administration’s new policy of repressing speech in the name of speech. In one single sentence, it affirms students’ right to protest while forbidding all conduct that poses a disruption to campus life. The author seems to imagine an impossibly constricted vision of acceptable protest that students will inevitably fail to satisfy.

In this sense the statement bears the most disagreeable resemblance to a different document I studied with students in my class on civil disobedience this week, “A Call for Unity” issued by Alabama clergy in April 1963. The letter was a statement on the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s campaign of nonviolent direct action to desegregate Birmingham. Its liberal signers expressed their sympathy with Black protestors while decrying the disruption of their methods as an affront to rights of others. It was this self-serving argument that inspired Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous reflection about the nature of protest, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

It proved timely to reread King’s letter with students this week to remind us that a protest that does not pose any disruption is no protest at all. The very point of engaging in protest is to force before the public what they don’t want to hear. This is what King means when he describes the work of protestors as Socratic gadflies — annoying pests stirring us from slumber — who use their very bodies to occupy spaces they don’t belong and stage claims the public refuses to hear. 

When gay and lesbian activists in the early 1990s began publicly performing their own anticipated deaths from HIV/AIDS as the “die-in” in defiance of the federal government’s callous denial of the public health crisis, they sought to do more than simply express an opinion. They were courageously staging their vulnerability to nonviolently inconvenience their fellow citizens, block access to offices and laboratories and arrest the flow of an everyday life that was killing them, even if only for a few minutes. In these fugitive moments of disruption, these courageous activists created spaces where their voices could be heard. They sought to confront the public with a reality it tries hard to deny and invite a genuine dialogue that this policy’s bad faith demands for “civil” dialogue forecloses. 

Democracy needs disruption. Without it, the centripetal pull of political life takes more and more matters out of the people’s hands and places them in the internal and often unaccountable control of the institutions that govern us. Order is only one political good we always need to balance against others. Democratic states therefore have an obligation to tolerate a certain degree of disruptive protest, even a very high degree, in the name of democracy itself. 

It has been said that a democracy’s ability to tolerate disruptive demonstrations is an important test of its commitment to values like free expression. If the same can be said of universities, this week’s intolerance of even the relatively minor disruption posed by a “die in” should earn the Cornell administration a failing grade. 

https://cornellsun.com/2024/02/12/livingston-there-is-no-free-expression...

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Do you want Cornell to

Do you want Cornell to control what we are allowed to wear, too? Many people wear masks to protect their health. There are students on campus who are immunocompromised. Students are also getting doxxed on campus, which Cornell doesn't do anything about. There's a camera recording at all times during protests. Mask are a way to protect safety and health. You don't care about promoting mutual respect and exchange of ideas because if you did, you should also be advocating for a complete ban on masks inside the classroom. I'm pretty sure you don't mind when your classmates wear masks to class, but now it's a "barrier" during protests... hmm, sure.

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Theme Year: Censorship

Cornell Theme Year should be called " A Guide on Attacking Free Speech On College Campuses." The Interim Expressive Activity Policy does not align with Cornell's values. It's Any Person and Any Study until you exercise your First Amendment rights. Now, you face disciplinary action. You're only allowed to exercise your First Amendment right one hour a day on weekdays. Where's the Department of Education to protect students' First Amendment rights? A university with multiple state-assisted schools shouldn't be allowed to impose strict limitations on speech. Lastly, Cornell can overlook their students getting doxxed but will dispatch police right away when someone exercises their First Amendment right. This policy heavily promotes police and university surveillance while also diminishing student's rights.

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Hello

Hello

I just have a question about the Interim Expressive Activity policy. Has face-masking while protesting been addressed? Hiding one's identity is a barrier to creating a more inclusive environment that promotes mutual respect and exchange of ideas. Thank you

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posters

"Posters, signs, or light projections  that have been erected or displayed without approval or that are more than two weeks old will be removed by appropriate university personnel. Any cost associated with the removal will be billed to the sponsoring Cornell organization, unit, or individual. " This harms academic and scholarly announcements. Many departments and programs make semester-long posters, which reduced printing costs for any sponsoring group. Also, "flame-resistant" posters for posters more than 8.5"x11" has a negative environmental impact and higher printing costs. Will department and other budget allotments increase to meet this un-ecological and genuinely excessive rule?  

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"health and safety"

If health and safety are truly valued, why are you not enforcing a mask rule, which is proven to prevent respiratory illnesses that literally prevent us from researching, teaching, and learning?

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No freedom is absolute, I support this policy.

While I care deeply about free speech, no freedom is ever absolute and this right also has to be managed in a way that protects conflicting interests and rights of our community members. I think this policy is a good first draft of that compromise between keeping the peace, so that we can go on about the business of this university, and allowing community members to protest peacefully. 

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Interim Policies

As a Cornell family we wholeheartedly support these interim policies with the goal of keeping all of our students safe. The repetitive, loud, disruptive, hate-speech filled protests on campus are highly distracting and scary for many students and staff. Rules need to be in place to allow for freedom of expression in a safe manner, and we need to ensure they are enforced properly. Students are grateful for protection as their school is supposed to be their safe space, in all spaces and at all times. Thank you!! 

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Interim Expressive Activity Policy

I find the proposed to be beneath the dignity of our institution. In a year of purported "free expression," it is ridiculous that the University would propose a policy that facially discriminates against the time, place, and manner of student protests. I take particular issue with the requirements of fire-retardant paper for regular flyers, with the prohibitions on chalking, with the restriction on audio amplification in front of Day Hall, and with the idea that the University can be the "sole arbiter" of future disciplinary proceedings under this rule. The real arbiter will be the federal judge presiding over the inevitable lawsuit that will arise when administration oversteps the bounds of the First Amendment. Cornell can try and be the "sole arbiter," but the fact that it receives state and federal funding will inevitably frustrate this argument.

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