I hate lawnmowers. This week, my classes and meetings were disrupted twice in the span of two hours by these droning, polluting machines.
I have a good mind to complain to the administration, telling Cornell that its use of lawnmowers infringes on my academic freedom. As a compromise, I’d be willing to put up with lawn mowing in spaces where the mowers will cause minimal disruption. I want to propose that only the grass between the Sage Chapel and Day Hall be mowed by gas-guzzling machines that violate city and town noise ordinances.
“Illogical!” you might say. “We cannot possibly allow the Arts Quad grass to lay untamed. Imagine the Ag. Quad! What would parents, visitors, and prospective students think of us?”
You would be correct. My proposal is illogical. Despise it though I might, the mowing must go on. As a reasonable person, I should be able to tolerate a few minutes of loud noise and get on with my work. The mowers aren’t affecting me personally, after all.
We can usefully interpret the regulations on lawn mowing through the lens of what our leaders have taken to calling “expressive activity.” Maintaining the landscape, no matter how noisy, is Cornell University’s attempt to secure its aesthetic brand. As a private corporation with protected rights and discretion over its campus, Cornell must be allowed to express itself.
Cornell’s 2024 Interim Expressive Activity Policy, a set of guidelines determining standard practice for on-campus protest, is currently being reviewed and discussed by a special ad hoc committee, and in fora for students, faculty and staff. The policy’s proponents proudly trumpet its “content neutrality.” The policy is allegedly designed to protect everyone’s right to teach, learn and work. According to the University, noisy protest threatens that fundamental right. Apparently, it threatens that right in ways that lawn mowers — which I am confident are measurably louder and more disruptive than most any protest or vigil you might see at Cornell — do not.
“Content neutral” is a well known legal term in higher education. It’s a restriction on speech that’s aimed at time, place and manner — not ideas or speakers. For example, the rules universities routinely make against excessive noise after hours in dormitories fall into this “content neutral” approach. A restriction on a student’s right to shout their political views — left, right or center — in a dorm hallway at 1 a.m. is a content neutral one.
The Interim Expressive Activity policy claims to extend this sensible kind of idea to the University’s public spaces. This is where the policy falters.
Expressive activity in public areas of college campuses, it turns out, happens all the time. As you read this, people are walking the quads actively expressing themselves about literature, science and politics, saying things that passersby might vehemently disagree with. I might express myself by coming to work in a red Make America Great Again hat or a keffiyeh. One or more of my colleagues and students would likely be offended, but I would not, as far as I can tell, be violating the Interim Expressive Activity policy.
Plainly, the Interim Expressive Activity policy is not content neutral. It dictates the time, place and manner not of any expressive activity (as in the dormitory example), but of collective, public expressive activity. The issue the policy seeks to address is not one of individuals expressing their views, but of groups of people coming together to express their views in front of one other. This is what is so chilling about the Interim Expressive Activity Policy— it fears strength in numbers.
When Cornell, the individual private entity, chooses to use its funds to mow the grass, it is expressing itself. I can’t make any reasonable objection. When a single student stands up on a soapbox in the Arts Quad in broad daylight to make a political statement, we as students, faculty, and even administrators, might also be hesitant to object. In truth, the University can theoretically use the principle of content neutrality to shut that kind of speech down, too—but it hasn’t, yet. But for some reason, it is when students, faculty and staff organize themselves to send strong messages about what they believe (even at decibel levels far below those of the dastardly mowers), that the University sees a problem.
There is only one way this double standard on content neutrality makes sense. The authors of the Interim Expressive Activity policy must believe that group expression is more dangerous than individual expression. There exists a certain threat in numbers. If a group has too much momentum, Cornell may fear losing control.
As a private entity, Cornell has no obligation to uphold the constitutional right to lawful peaceful assembly. And as a private entity, the University reserves the right to express itself and its values however it sees fit. Moreover, as the corporate entity of which students, faculty and staff are a part, Cornell reserves the right to decide which values are our collective values. Our leadership can declare, for example, that inviting outspoken bigot and antisemite Ann Coulter to campus expresses not our common endorsement of Coulter’s abhorrent views, but our common “commitment to free expression.” So maybe you can see why the leadership views collective expressive activities that question decisions like the Coulter invitation or that call for divestment from Israeli arms manufacturers as a threat. Sanctioning this expression busts the myth that there is a single collective spirit called “Cornell” that transcends politics as it is practiced elsewhere. Through the Interim Expressive Activity Policy, Cornell reserves the right to speak for itself, and for you.
There is a reason corporations prefer monocultures like Bermuda grass lawns, where only a few lifeforms can survive, to wild landscapes that support a profusion of beetles and bees, chipmunks and moles — control. What the Interim Expressive Activity Policy says, quite clearly, is that those groups who prefer wildflower meadows to putting greens would do well to keep that opinion to themselves.
Alex Nading is a medical and environmental anthropologist, and professor in Cornell’s Department of Anthropology. He edits for Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Professor Nading can be reached at [email protected].
The Cornell Daily Sun is interested in publishing a broad and diverse set of content from the Cornell and greater Ithaca community. We want to hear what you have to say about this topic or any of our pieces. Here are some guidelines on how to submit. And here’s our email: [email protected].