FIU Students Should Not Be Punished for a Silent Protest

FIU students protesting the school's working arrangements with ICE are facing disciplinary charges for expressing themselves 'indoors.' PHOTO CREDIT: Handout / FIU ICEbreakers

We’ve long been critical of the brutal suppression of speech on college campuses, from the shouting down of a federal appellate judge at Stanford Law School to a Yale University noise riot that shut down a panel on – irony alert – censorship and free speech.

Institutions of higher learning are awakening to the need to end their tolerance of the heckler’s veto, often accompanied by coarse language and physical threats. But if the facts reported by WLRN public radio are accurate, Florida International University is punishing students not for disrupting an event, but simply for expressing a disfavored message.

In March, seven FIU students reportedly entered a “fireside chat” hosted by university president Jeanette M. Nuñez. The students wore shirts reading “ICE OFF FIU” to protest the university’s working arrangements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The students stood in silence for a moment and quickly left.

WLRN reports that FIU brought disciplinary charges against the students under a policy prohibiting “expressive conduct” indoors. The university maintains that the rule protects its operations from disruption. Yet Jehnny Rivera, executive director of FIU’s Office of University Protocol, Ceremonies and Events, reportedly told an investigating officer that the protest did not disrupt the event or other university operations. If that is true, it is difficult to see what legitimate interest FIU’s punishment serves.

The First Amendment protects expression that is controversial and unwelcome. At a public university, officials should not convert a rule against disruption into a general prohibition on silent political expression inside campus buildings.

The students’ assigned punishment raises an additional concern. According to WLRN, FIU ordered them to record “original” and “thoughtful” videos explaining which university policies they had violated. The university can require the students to redo those videos until administrators find them satisfactory.

That sounds less like education than compelled contrition – the sort of thing one expects at a Maoist struggle session, not as a disciplinary measure at a university. The First Amendment generally protects Americans not only against being silenced, but also against being forced by the government to deliver a message they do not believe.

Universities can impose reasonable, viewpoint-neutral rules governing the time, place, and manner of demonstrations. They should punish protesters who shout down speakers, block access, threaten others, or materially interfere with an event.
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But seven students silently displaying a message and then leaving do not constitute, on the reported facts, such a case. FIU should drop the disciplinary charges – and remember that a public university should be a marketplace of ideas, not a school for compelled conformity.

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