How Colleges Are Changing Their Rules on Protesting

Ahead of a new school year, colleges across the country have adopted a wave of new rules around protest and speech.

At Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, students now must receive approval from the administration before they can protest. Rutgers students will need to acquire a permit from the school. And at Indiana University, students may no longer engage in what school leaders call “expressive activity” between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Across the country, some universities have enacted a wave of new rules and tightened restrictions around protest and speech in an effort to avoid a repeat of the spring semester, when thousands of people were arrested at protests and encampments prompted by the Israel-Hamas war. The rules vary from campus to campus, but they generally set limits on when and where protests can occur, and clearly prohibit encampments.

In many cases, universities say the policy changes are minimal or simply clarify existing rules. Some attorneys said many of the new restrictions were written to fall within acceptable limits on speech, and would not raise constitutional issues if enforced equally.

Opponents of the rules say they are designed to stifle protest.

Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, a professor at the University of New Orleans, said that more detailed rules would make it easier for university administrators to say that student protesters have broken them.

“To me it seems very clear that they’re setting up a case to point to where students have violated something,” she said.