Queens College Community Protests New Chilling Restrictions on Campus Demonstrations

On Monday, February 3rd, over 100 faculty, staff, and students of CUNY Queens College protested their administration’s new interim policy that imposes limits on the “time, place, and manner” of demonstrations on campus. The policy’s new restrictions are designed to restrict the efficacy and impact of even the most peaceful campus protests and to impose self-censorship on the Queens College community.

The policy restricts protests to only five locations on campus, bars indoor demonstrations, and requires demonstrators to apply for permission from the administration at least three-business days in advance. The college President’s Cabinet drafted and announced it immediately after the new year, when a large portion of the college population was not on campus. Violation of these policies “may be grounds for disciplinary action.”

“The interim guidelines violate the spirit of Queens College’s oft-repeated motto, Discimus ut serviamus, We learn so that we may serve,” says Karen Sullivan, co-chair of the Queens College chapter of the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY. “They violate Queens College’s well-known tradition of fighting injustice and serving our communities — on campus, in Queens, in NYC, nation-wide, and internationally. Now, more than ever, the Queens College community–students, faculty, staff, and administration, must continue to resist forcefully against restrictions on our ability to speak out in support of the most vulnerable among us.”

This policy comes on the heels of similar restrictions imposed on campus protests throughout CUNY and in other universities in the country. The Queens College campus has a long history of honoring civil protest. Its library tower is named for James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Henry Schwerener who were murdered in 1964 while volunteering in the Freedom Summer project of the Council of Federated Organizations. Campus peaceful protests of the past several years have ranged in political views, concerns for workers’ rights, and visions for Queens College as a space of learning and community. Several if not all of those protests would now violate the new policy.

As Briallen Hopper, Associate Professor of English, explains: “Ever since the Civil Rights Movement, Queens College students, staff, and faculty have gathered to protest injustice and stand up for what’s right. This draconian new interim policy would have prohibited virtually every demonstration that has ever taken place on our campus. If the policy is implemented, it will have a disastrous effect on our campus culture, leading to censorship, silencing, and chilling surveillance. The right to protest is essential for education and democracy. Now more than ever, we need to protect it!”

The demonstration began outside of Kiely Hall, where the administration offices are located. This is one of the locations where faculty and staff have held peaceful demonstrations before, and a location now barred to us under the new policy. The demonstration then went inside Kiely Hall to deliver a petition opposing the interim policy to President Frank Wu. 565 PSC members signed the petition, which was accepted by the President Wu’s chief of staff. Entering the building is also forbidden under the interim policy.

After the petition delivery, the protestors marched to locations significant to the campus’s history of protest, including the Rosenthal Library clock tower named for Chaney, Goodman, and Schwererner. Some demonstrators carried posters with pictures of historic Queens College protests that the interim policy would now ban.