The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/interim-expressive-policy/)
Thus, college level disobedience often feels like the only way for students to get their voices heard. When universities suppress that power of expression, they rob students of a platform to stand up for their beliefs. This creates a deadlock between administration and students, polarizing both sides and creating hostility on campus.
If Cornell has taught us anything, it’s that student protest not only works but that it’s central to learning.
Faculty Senators discussed the implications of the updated Interim Expressive Activity Policy in a March 13 meeting.
Our students should be allowed to engage in disruptive peaceful protest as a critical form of expression freely and without fear.
On Tuesday, Cornell faculty members held a rally in protest of the Interim Expressive Activity Policy.
Obviously, the administration doesn’t want an ideal campus. What it wants is to pull Cornell as far away from democracy as possible.
Dear students,
We write in response to the issues you raised, and to say that we share your concerns about Cornell’s “Interim Expressive Activity Policy,” which places significant limitations on political speech across our campus. This policy also prescribes disciplinary action for members of our community who exercise the very rights to “free expression” that the University administration has asked us all to celebrate this year. At a moment that demands that we care more, not less, about each other and the world around us, the fact that the administration seems intent on intimidating students, staff, and faculty and discouraging us all from exercising basic rights is deeply troubling.
The administration claims to support protest as long as it does not “disrupt” university operations. There is an absurdity to this claim, given that the purpose of protest is precisely to disrupt — to disrupt routinization, to disrupt apathy, to foreground a problem. A non-disruptive protest is no protest at all.