Protesters at Indiana University at Bloomington last year.
After Indiana University administrators called in state troopers to remove a pro-Palestinian encampment in the spring—creating nationally broadcast scenes of pandemonium in Bloomington, where riot gear–clad police arrested demonstrators—the IU Board of Trustees set a new policy on expression.
Right before the crackdown, the administration had banned camping on campus. Afterward, officials doubled down, adding a raft of new restrictions that took effect Aug. 1. Among them: a ban on “expressive activity” between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Since then, many faculty, staff, students and others have been purposefully violating the ban, said Ben Robinson, a tenured associate professor of Germanic studies at IU. Robinson said he and others have been holding protest “vigils” every Sunday after 11 p.m., and hundreds of people have taken part.
But this Sunday will be the last vigil, Robinson said, because, in a surprising turn of events, the university has given its tacit approval.
“Nonamplified sound is okay past 11 p.m., and so are candles assuming they are not fixated to the ground in any way,” an IU Event Management employee wrote in an email to a vigil organizer that Robinson shared with Inside Higher Ed. “AKA as long as you are just using handheld candles, that is fine. Let me know if you need anything else!”
Mark Bode, an IU spokesperson, didn’t provide an interview Monday. He initially responded to Inside Higher Ed’s inquiry Monday with a single sentence: “There has been no change to the Expressive Activity Policy.”
When provided with the message from IU Event Management, Bode wrote in a follow-up email that there was a request “for an event scheduled to start at 10:30 p.m. … The requestor did not mark the event as one pertaining to expressive activity, and the requestor’s questions were answered with that understanding. Under the Expressive Activity Policy, expressive activity is permitted until 11:00 p.m. Events Management will follow up with the requestor to provide an opportunity to update the submission.”
Robinson agrees that the policy is still on the books and said he’s a plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit to officially overturn the ban; a hearing is scheduled for Nov. 15. But he is already declaring victory in one sense.
“Our moral spirit, our community’s care about free speech has had the steadfastness that has forced them to back down in enforcement,” said Robinson, a Jewish supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israeli policy.
Robinson said he was among about 20 people who previously received letters of reprimand for violating the policy. Yet when ESPN’s College GameDay came to Bloomington last month for an IU–University of Washington football game, students camped and celebrated past 11 p.m.
“Their policy is in shambles—they don’t have the conviction behind it,” Robinson said. “We saw their dishonesty already; what we’re seeing now is their lack of courage.”
Russ Skiba, an IU Bloomington professor emeritus, wrote in an email Monday that the administration has shown other signs of a shift in approach. “Neither the IUPD nor administration representatives were present at the most recent vigil, the first time that has happened,” Skiba wrote. “From our perspective, the administration was clearly backed into a corner by media coverage of their inconsistency in enforcement between the vigil and football celebrations, an inconsistency which contradicts state law governing expressive activity policies.”
If officials have stopped enforcing the policy, “it’s certainly incumbent on the university to make that clear,” said Risa Lieberwitz, a labor and employment law professor at Cornell University.
“We’ve seen across the country universities adopting overly broad and overly restrictive speech policies … particularly since this past summer,” said Lieberwitz, who’s also a member of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
While the vigils may be ending, the protests against the broader policy won’t, Robinson said.
“We are very determined that we return to a good-faith policy that fosters speech,” he said. “When power doesn’t meet with obsequiousness, it starts to tremble.”