QUEENS COLLEGE–Queens College students, faculty, and staff returned from winter break to a new set of restrictions on the time, place, and manner for free speech on campus — resulting in protests, petitions, and the QC Academic Senate passing a motion demanding that the administration suspend the rules. As of the date of this article’s publication, the administration has yet to directly notify students of these policy changes.
“[Students] don’t leave their rights behind just because they set foot on campus. In fact, part of being in college should be finding your voice and understanding how important your voice can and should be,” said Erica Doran, QC Psychology professor and co-chair of the Queens Professional Staff Congress (PSC) Chapter, to The Knight News.
The Queens College Guidance Regarding Time, Place, and Manner Regulations now require on-campus demonstrations to be requested in advance, limit the location of demonstrations to a few specific areas and prohibit the use of noise amplifiers such as bullhorns or microphones, among other rules.
This selected list comes from a revised version of the Guidance, released in early February. The original guidelines were introduced in January and contained additional, more stringent requirements, including requiring on-campus protestors to remove face coverings upon the request of a Public Safety officer, prohibiting protests inside of buildings, and giving the college the ability to deem anyone not possessing a QC ID as trespassers.
“The interim time, leave and manner guidelines for the conduct of on-campus demonstrations were drafted in response to a City University of New York requirement of all its colleges in response to the recommendations made by former Chief Justice Jonathan Lippman in his recent review of antisemitism,” the QC Office of Communications and Marketing told The Knight News.
