One need not be politically active to understand the tensions that are simmering between college administrations and their staff and students. Schools such as NYU, Rutgers, Emerson College, Harvard University, and UCLA spent the summer preparing for a resurgence of policy conversations and protests demanding transparency and divestment. Several colleges have adopted official stances of “institutional neutrality.”
It is no secret that these actions are in response to the pro-Palestine encampments that swept the United States in April of this year.
The notion of institutional neutrality indicates that social or political topics will not be tolerated by the institutional entity or those affiliated with the school and will instead be left to non-administrative, personal decisions on one’s viewpoint. In tandem with many declarations of neutrality, schools have barred school-affiliated student organizations from making statements of solidarity or support regarding conflicts or social issues.
As a student journalist returning to campus, I question the legitimacy of the institution I have chosen to pursue my career and the validity of American higher education as a whole.
At a private college touting its privilege of exemption from the First Amendment's protections of speech, press, assembly, and petition, I wonder what a striking precedent this may set, not only for protest and social discourse on college campuses but also in the broader discussion of the U.S. Constitution and the impact of “bending the rules” of constitutional criterion on a global scale.
But don’t worry. Emerson College, alongside a growing number of institutions adopting neutrality statements, remains “committed to freedom of expression within the parameters of the content-neutral time, place, and manner limitations outlined in this policy.” In other words, students are allotted freedom of speech, press, assembly, and petition, but only when administrations say it’s okay.
Is it the administration pulling the strings, or perhaps the boards of trustees composed of friends or alumni who made it big and find it humbling to donate to their favorite Big Business? I only ask because shortly before many institutions began their school years, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) posted a press release and accompanying document advertised as “a trustee’s guide to preventing encampments and other occupations on campus.”
The ACTA’s report says student encampments are “bad public relations for the institution,” to which I ask, is it perhaps bad PR for a campus to reach a point of ignorance towards students requesting to have an open dialogue with administration, that young academics feel the only means of being heard is to disrupt? The reports loosely encourage private institutions to “hold themselves to the spirit of the First Amendment,” but quickly moves on to reinforce the fact that private institutions are not legally bound to the amendments’ freedoms.
As young students, we are taught that we live in a country built upon the stories of martyrs who fought through oppressive leadership and broke the rules for the greater good, and we are taught to hold them in the highest regard. We are told their cause was commendable, that we should all be like the Founding Fathers, the brave settlers [colonizers] who fought waves and squalls and disease, and most of all authoritarian governments, to give us the future we deserve in a country where freedom is the strongest pillar of society.
The students are not to blame. Despite ignorant and counterproductive administrative actions and half-hearted statements, student organizers called upon their school’s executives to engage in peaceful conversation.
We are told that resistance is a valiant cause until we do it ourselves. We are told this at every moment of our lives. Stand up for yourself when someone wrongs you and when someone contradicts what you know is right. Stand up for your rights to your mind, your body, and your freedom of speech and expression. Know your own values and know your rights.
Lectures on the necessity of civil disobedience are fundamental in classroom conversations. The American Revolution is the pinnacle example and glossed over tellings of the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement– condemning extreme militarization against peaceful students at Jackson State and Kent State– and the in-betweens of resistance and people power.
And so here I return to my liberal arts college after a decade of education consisting of lessons on bravery, inquiry, evolution, and internal values, and I am now told that I have always been wrong. My peers and I have applied our learning, honed our interests and morals, and executed them accordingly, and now, apparently, the curriculum has changed.
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