Free Speech and Peaceful Assembly on Campus

University of Northern Colorado · 139 Collen Sonnentag and Breanna Bailey

 

 

Andrew
Hi and welcome back to Bear in Mind. I'm your host, Andrew Galster. And today we are going to be talking about protesting on campus and what that means here at UNC. In the last episode, we talked about why it's so important for students to go vote. Well, this is a big part of representing yourself in a democracy, sometimes students feel like just voting might not cut it. In the second part of this multi-part series, we will talk about the First Amendment and what that means for students. But what is the First Amendment? Hailed as one of the most important amendments for Americans rights, what does it actually protect and how does it intersect with college campuses like UNC, the First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting or establishing of religion; or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peacefully to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” As you might know, colleges have been a long time op-ed for protests, dating back to the first student protest at Harvard in 1766. Students at that time did not think the taste of butter was up to snuff and used their First Amendment rights to protest against it on campus. So, the Butter Rebellion went down in history as the first student protest. To help understand what a Butter Rebellion would look like here at UNC, I have Colleen Sonnentag and Breanna Bailey in the studio with me today.

Colleen
I'm doctor Colleen Sonnentag, she/her/hers, I am our Dean of Student Development here at UNC.

Breanna
Hi, I'm Breanna Marie Bailey. I'm currently a senior in the Political Science department. I use she-series pronoun. I am the HSS senator at-large, and I am also the front desk training lead for Student Affairs.

Andrew
Thank you guys for being here with me today. So, what are some of the benefits of protesting peacefully?

Breanna
Well, for me, when we've engaged in protests on campus before one of the big benefits is buy-in from a larger audience. We've seen campus protests at other universities and, immediately starting off with a “us versus them” dynamic, it hurts a lot of people. It hurts the people that are trying to get their opinions out, but it also hurts the staff and faculty that really want to support the opinions or the free speech of students.

Colleen
You all really do influence the decisions of a university and also shape our campus culture. And so again like not, because every protest I have seen as an administrator is a position I agree with. But really, seeing students learn what their rights are and express themselves, like makes me immensely proud in the work I do like, even if I don't agree with them, moved by their dedication, their commitment, and their willingness to put themselves out there because they think running a protest right. The rest of your life is still going on. You're still going to class. You still have family commitments and work and some of that. So, you're making some real trade-offs. In terms of your own experience as a student to exercise your voices as a citizen and as a participant in our community. And so I think that's really powerful. It's really encouraging. When I see students protesting because I think we've. Taught them something and they are practicing how to advocate for themselves and things that they really care about.

Andrew
Could you talk me through how that process would get started? So say I'm a student here on campus and I'm really and I mean really passionate about having no mayonnaise on my sandwiches, right. So passionate that I want to organize a protest about it here at UNC. How would that process get started?

Colleen
So to mayo on sandwiches. There are a few different ways that student groups can demonstrate on the UNC campus, and I think the most important thing to say is that we don't have any like specific free speech zones. So, you benefit from the right of your freedom of expression. Anywhere here, and so you aren't limited to only stand here only say this here. The big things to follow are that if you are using space that is reservable through the university, you would need to request that through conference and event services. Like if you wanted to table, you know you would just do that form like just the same way you'd want to reserve a meeting room on campus. And then sometimes, depending on what you're doing, there might be things like additional permits for amplified sound or some of that is also just to make sure that for example, like, we're not doing anything that damages UNC's buildings or grounds. Or if you're outside doing a demonstration that we make sure the sprinklers are turned off so that you all don't get soaking wet, right? So yeah, some of that logistic piece comes in by working first, starting with our Conference and Event Services staff and you can exercise your freedom of speech at any point without doing any paperwork.

Andrew
I'm eating my mayo sandwich out in public and that causes some stirs. A protest could just naturally form.

Breanna
Right. I think the important thing to point out, especially with like federal regulations, is free speech does not extend to intimidating or harassing an individual. So, for instance, if you were eating your mayo sandwich and someone came up to you and was threatening you because of your mayo. Well, that's not allowed on campus, and that is a form of harassment. 

Colleen
Or yeah, or if I stole your sandwich from you or prevented you from leaving the seat you were in, right. If we boxed you in, that would be interference with operations potentially, or threats or harassment. So, you know, a lot of times what we're talking about was is where does one person or group’s freedom of expression and their right to express themselves run into another person or group’s freedom of expression and right to express themselves too.

Andrew
That kind of circles back to the benefits of protesting peacefully.

Breanna
Yeah, exactly. Like, for example, the protests that we participated in, it was our, our founding value to protest nonviolently, to protest peacefully. And that's hard. It's hard when you're really passionate about your opinions, your convictions. But at the end of the day, the goal is conversation. The goal is to move the dial just a little bit more and from personal experience, when you go and approach someone peacefully and say, hey, this is what we're out here for, how do you feel about that? People are… overwhelmingly going to sit and talk to you, and if they're not, they'll leave. And that's their right.

Andrew
Circling away from protests for justice a quick second. What are some rights we have regarding free speech as students?

Breanna
We don't have freedom to harass, intimidate. Any of that kind of stuff, but what we do have freedom to do is to have discussions, to voice our opinions, to let administration know that. A policy or a procedure isn't equitable or fair, and we also have the right to work with our administration to alleviate the problems that we're coming across as students.

Colleen
I think you all also benefit from, you know, you get to wear, you get to have whatever water bottle stickers you want and dress the way you want to for the most part on campus. And again like the history of protest and freedom of expression and how that's shown up on college campuses in the US, right, there's a rich history of that in the United States of demonstrations and protests. And lots of fun case law that people could look into from both the K-12 education environment and higher Ed. But you know, Tinker, the K-12 case where students were basically removed from class for wearing arm bands protesting the Vietnam War, and that is still a case that informs how public institutions work with freedom of expression on campuses and work with their students. So, and I think that, you can say things and you can challenge each other and we hope you do that as part of your experience here, because it's all part of the educational process.

Breanna
Yeah, I know when we were organizing our protest, it was really heartening to know that the administration was looking out for not only our safety, but our freedom of speech, because we've all seen the news, especially with the recent protests around campuses and a lot of administrations, a lot of campuses, didn't really protect freedom of speech and it was really hard to see and it was really scary for a lot of people but I think it's cool that even though we're scared to do stuff, we do it anyway.

Andrew
From what I understand, colleges historically are the perfect place to, like you said, get conversation started withholding, you know, harassment and other horrible things that absolutely should not be happening. So I'm glad to see that UNC is really just part of that.

Colleen
So like I mentioned before, this campus is yours to express yourself within. So if we have reservable meeting rooms on campus that you want to bring in a speaker as a student group or something like that, that's something you're able to do. There are some restrictions on time, place and manner that campuses can institute. So for example, if a class is held in Candelaria in room 101 and you're like “I want to have my protest in room 101 during this class time,” the university can say, “No, you can't do that. There's a class in that space, but if you want to march throughout campus, if you want to chalk in the McKee Breezeway. Those facilities are accessible to you.”

Andrew
I guess I didn't realize how easy it is for students to express and to use their freedom of speech, which. It is really cool to see here on campus. You mentioned chalk, I see a lot of it all over campus. I was just kind of wondering what goes on with that. Are there regulations? How does that work?

Colleen
So we don't restrict chalking on campus, so anyone with chalk can, draw, put out there what they want to for the most part That can be tricky, because oftentimes people don't know who wrote that or, you know, you certainly might not agree with some of the content that you see, chalked. And what I would recommend is carry around your own piece of chalk and then you can just add to the totality of expression on our campus So, chalk away!

Andrew
So yeah, go chalk right now. Go chalk about Mayo sandwiches.

Colleen
Chalk about mayo sandwiches.

Andrew
Are there any other outlets on campus that students can go to, to get their voices heard or their opinions expressed?

Breanna
Yeah, well, I'm a part of the Student Government Association, and we have our meetings biweekly on Mondays. Any student at UNC is welcome to come for comment hours at SGA to let us know what's on your mind, what's affecting you on campus, what your experiences are like. And we're more than happy to listen to calls to protest, calls to for organizational change. I know we're thinking of a couple pieces of legislation that have come from students talking to us about their concerns. So SGA is a great place. We also work for student affairs, and if there's ever any concerns about rights or feeling like someone's discriminated against or not able to express their rights freely. You can come make a report at the front desk of student affairs and we'll sit with you, listen to you, and make sure all the details are collected so our wonderful staff can give you support and maybe even if you're looking to organize a protest, you can sit with a faculty member or a staff member and they'll walk you through the steps to make it organized.

Colleen
And safe, I think Bri mentioned a lot of great resources we have. I can't overestimate SGA I would like to go in the right direction. Like again, I think students often underestimate the voice they have and the influence they have on campus and student government association is a huge, important part of shared governance within a university structure. And so SGA has a voice and an established role in crafting university policy and speaking truth to administration, to advocate for the needs of our students that might be missed, and so definitely would amplify the idea of work with SGA, because that's a huge part of your role on campus and who you have access to.

Colleen
I think the other thing that's a great resource is the Free Speech website that we have for UNC and that's it is hosted by the Dean of Students Office currently. But that website has a lot of great resources about maybe what some of those parameters are, right, like. If I were to do this, do I need to fill out a form or what things should I think about that might be against policy? Another great resource there.

Andrew
So a few years ago I actually was assigned to cover SGA and all the things that they get up to. And when I first stepped into the SGA office, I was kind of intimidated, like legislative meetings, executive meetings, it all kind of sounds a little intimidating. But everyone there was super accepting. It was super easy. Just get involved and talk to people and I think anyone who's interested in learning about SGA or wants to make their voice heard on campus and go to these meetings absolutely go do it. There's nothing to be afraid of. Everyone there was super kind, super cool and super easy to talk to. So definitely go check them out. So. What if I'm a student on campus who absolutely hates mayo on sandwiches like we've well established? And there's other students on campus who also hate mayo on sandwiches. Is there a way I could get in contact with them to or to learn that there's other people who have similar views as me?

Breanna
Well, coming from personal experience, talk to the people in your college and really utilize those messaging apps like GroupMe and social media. I mean, we're already connected, so. Don't be afraid to find like-minded people. I know I wasn't the one who initially started the organizing. I had folks who knew what I'm passionate about that approached me and said, “hey, I think you'd be really helpful to organize a protest, are you interested?” And I was so I helped. And I think having those courageous conversations of “man, this is really bothering me. What do you think?” You'll never know where it's going to.

Andrew
We're at a public university like you guys are saying I can't stress enough how important it is to go out and just talk to people that would not be in your circles otherwise, you know you're gonna meet so many people with different backgrounds and different histories, it would be a shame if you didn't go out and, you know, widen your worldview a little bit.

Colleen
Yeah. And I think that individual connection and finding those shared values and interests and causes, great way to get connected not just within the UNC community, but maybe the Greeley community like there are a lot of local groups that you could be involved with too. One other thing to do is check out our Office of Student Engagement. In our clubs and orgs area because there may already be an “I Hate Mayo Sandwich” club and you could look it up and bear connect and be like I would like to join that club. Those are my people. Yeah, because we have a bunch of student groups that again either may already exist or you're like these folks seem similarly interested in this topic. Maybe I'll go check out one of these student club and org meetings. And find some other folks.

Breanna
And I will say SGA again because it's all of the different colleges represented. If you come and tell your at-large senator that there is a concern of yours, they're going to do research and try and get other voices to see if it's a common concern so that we can address it together.

Andrew
And from what I understand, there are hundreds of clubs on campus already, and if there's not one, you could just go out there and make it yourself.

Colleen
Totally. Yeah. So again, Office of Student Engagement. We have a great staff team over there who can help students create an organization. Yeah, get a couple friends together. Start your own club.

Andrew
So at this point I'm pretty far along on my anti-mayo on sandwiches conquest right? I've created a club. It's got thousands of members all across campus and now I want to create a protest here at UNC. What are some of the pitfalls that I should try to avoid when doing that?

Breanna
Well, historically, a lot of organizations and movements fall apart because of infighting. So say you're in your mayo club people are like, “we need to get rid of Hellmann’s. No, we need to get rid of olive oil mayo.” And you're just fighting over which specific type of mayo you guys want. And you guys end up hating each other. So stay focused on the values that you guys share. And. You know, people are going to have differences. Make sure that the values that you're protesting are shared so you don't run into that pitfall of fighting with people that actually agree with you.

Colleen
I think you know there are different laws and policies that would guide how we operate as a campus. And again that includes some related to freedom of expression and protest. And again, these are all these aren't secrets. Like we try to put them all on a website. So you all can find them really easily but also the red tape pieces or the paperwork pieces just because, like doing a request form may exist. Filling out that form don't have that be like, “well, I don't want to fill that out, so we're not going to do it” like some of those things exist. So we can make sure again, that like the sprinklers don't turn on and get you soaking wet while you're out there and that it's not too much to manage, right, like and I think beyond that, I would always advise students to not like miss some of the things that might otherwise feel obvious. So for example, if you are protesting and bringing weapons. Don't bring weapons because then there's a weapons issue which really isn't about the speech or the message, right? But like, yes, campus will in fact regulate weapons.

Andrew
OK for sure. So I should definitely leave my butter knife at home.

Colleen
You better only if you're using a butter knife as a weapon. If you are using a butter knife to make a sandwich? Totally fine.

Breanna
Another pitfall I would consider is that we, the institution of UNC, is housed in the City of Greeley. So just because our free speech is encouraged and we have guidelines at UNC, doesn't mean that those guidelines are gonna match with the City of Greeley. So try and do a little bit of homework before you start your mayo protest because while you might be OK and meeting all of the regulations and guidelines for UNC, there may be guidelines you're violating or stepping outside of for the City of Greeley, so.

Andrew
That's something I probably definitely would not have thought about, right.

Colleen
Noise ordinances are a good example of that.

Andrew
Oh yeah, I guess it would get complicated, huh? OK, let's say I do cross the line, do something I'm supposed to. I got too excited about my sandwiches. Happens every day. What are some of the consequences that I could say for, you know, breaking city ordinances or laws or something like that?

Colleen
I think probably not surprising to you to hear me say, it depends, right? It the nature and the severity of the violation or the issue would really depend on what that potential response is. You know I think something that's important to me as someone who has to enforce policy as part of my job. I want to intervene at the lowest level, right? So like, if you are, using a megaphone and that is disrupting a class. The first thing I would prefer to do is say “hey, I need you to stop using a megaphone because you're keeping this class from happening,” and if that ends the issue we're done, right? Please don't do that anymore. It's probably sufficient to address most of those kind of concerns. I think from a UNC policy perspective, if we are talking more about things like weapons and threats and theft, vandalism, destruction of property, right, like those types of actions that UNC might take if a student violates the student code of conduct. Someone could potentially be suspended or expelled for violations and we remove students from campus in the most egregious or extreme circumstances typically right? We do that very infrequently compared to how often I might send a student a warning letter for noise through the city, right? You could get cited, could be a misdemeanor, could be a felony, could be an arrest where you do go to jail and again depends on what you're doing and how that's going, I do think that again the historical perspective, a lot of times folks have been arrested for exercising freedom of expression and while getting arrested isn’t probably a desirable outcome, I don't know that many of us would recall stories about the civil rights movement and the era if we didn't hear about people getting arrested for refusing to leave lunch counters.

Andrew
I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that we're even able to group together in public and express ourselves like the way we can in the modern day. And from what I'm gathering, it's like just don't be stupid. Don't take it to the ultimate extreme.

Breanna
Yeah. And I think outside of like concrete punishments that come. You also lose the trust of your fellow students. I know that one of the things that's prohibited is interrupting events. So imagine you're graduating. You've worked super hard all four years and you're ready to graduate. And folks come busting in the door and you're not able to graduate. That loses not only the legitimacy of what you're trying to get across, but it also it hurts the students that you're trying to advocate for. So, think about how you would want to be treated if the opposite opinion if mayo lovers started their club, how would you want them to treat you?

Andrew
From what I understand, we've had some protests here on campus in the past. What are some of the things that made these protests successful versus not successful at all?

Breanna
That's a great question. I know from personal experience, some of the stuff that made our protest successful was working with administration and letting them know, “hey, these are our goals. These are, this is our vision for our movement. This is what we want to accomplish. And how can we do that safely and in a way that isn't going to disrupt UNC's day-to-day operation?” I know we've had other protests in the past and I think keeping that idea of treating people the way you want to be treated, it'll take you a way.

Colleen
I think years ago, like going in the way back machine a little bit for me, thinking about some of our student demonstrations, they've really been effective at like resourcing different initiatives or programs on campus that were really important to students and some of that got achieved by, you know, students being present at Board of Trustees meetings and getting on the speakers list and voicing their concerns. But yeah, that's one example from a little bit. Longer ago than what Bri’s referencing.

Andrew
Switching beats here just a little bit, but still definitely within this protesting umbrella to nobody's shock and surprise election season is right around the corner. And from what I understand, UNC has a history of campaigning. I just was hoping you guys could tell me a little bit about how that works.

Colleen
Yeah, so. Campaigns can work with again our existing structures, primarily through our conference and event services area to reserve event space on campus and that would be for a private event. And so UNC won't restrict campaigns from coming. Again, as a public institution, taking a content neutral position in who's coming is really important and again supports the mission of UNC and higher Ed overall to be a place where you're going to be presented with ideas and values that are different than your own and how that is an important and essential part of higher education. Campaigns can come, it is like any other private event on campus. Sometimes we've had protests on campus in response to candidates coming. And yeah, those are all things that can happen if someone visits, so those events would be typically they’re in a reserved space, they're there for a specific time period. There might be additional security present or something like that.

Andrew
Are there any notable figures in the past who have came and campaigned at UNC?

Colleen
Both Biden and Trump, as presidential candidates, had stopped at UNC prior to being elected.

Andrew
Wow, that's actually really kind of amazing. I had no idea. That's really cool.

Colleen
It's a very busy Saturday, yeah.

Andrew
So as a student who partakes in protests and organized protests, how do you feel the school reacts when you guys are out there expressing yourselves?

Breanna
Yeah, very supportive, which was very surprising for us because when we, I'll be honest, when we started our organization, it was very hush-hush. We met on campus, but we purposely didn't reserve rooms because we didn't want anyone to know where we were going to be. But once we showed up and made our voices heard on campus. It almost an hour into our protest we had administration come and thank us for. Making our voices heard and. The same day we were able to knock out some of those applications that Colleen had mentioned and we had a very productive meeting about the goals of our organization, the values, and why we were protesting in the first place and it was very helpful to go over things like UNC's policy, but also the City of Greeley's policies and thinking of creative ways to make sure that all of our institutions were satisfied, but also our voices were heard and it was really, really heartening. To know that I didn't have… we didn't have two barriers to entry, you know, cause fear stops a lot of people from making their voices heard but people are afraid, you can do it anyway, and it's nice the administration isn't on top of that fear compounding it.

Andrew
Are there any last notes you guys want to tell a potential audience?

Breanna
I know it's on the resource from UNC, the freedom of speech, but the ACLU is a fantastic, broad resource that if you ever have questions about, “Oh well, is this going too far? What's the precedent here for speaking about mayo on campus.” Go to the ACLU and they will almost always be able to answer your question.

Colleen
Yeah, I agree that ACLU has a lot of great resources for students. We do also link to some of those on UNC's website, the Unite series of workshops that are division of diversity, equity and inclusion have been putting on there is a session now in the Unite rotation related to freedom of expression and free speech, and so ACLU is helping facilitate those. And that's a pretty cool opportunity to learn more on campus. And again I think I said this, but just about nothing makes me prouder in my role, then when I see that we have students who are learning how to exercise their voices and think strategically about how to further causes that they're passionate about, right, it's just really exciting to see because I think that's one of the coolest things you can learn while you're in college.

Breanna
Yeah. I mean, especially with like Political Science majors, all we're learning about is issues and how to form our opinions. And so if the learning stops in the classroom, we're missing the point.

Andrew
If you guys have any questions, you should definitely go check them out. They obviously know what they're talking about. And if you have any questions for me, you can catch me outside with my anti-mayo signs. So that's all I got for you guys, thank you.