Dorm decorations are becoming a front in the campus free speech wars
Dorm door decorations are the next battleground in the fight for academic freedom and freedom of speech at Barnard College.
Like many schools, Barnard students often use their dorm doors to show a little personality. A walk through the freshman dorms early this week revealed sorority signs, New Year’s decorations and a pinned-up piece of loose-leaf paper asking, “Who is your celebrity crush?”
But students also put up stickers and slogans supporting the Palestinian cause and calling the war in Gaza a genocide. “Zionism is terrorism,” read one student’s door sticker.
Concerned that some students might feel intimidated by such messages, the Barnard administration decided to implement a ban on decorations on dormitory doors. Their removal would begin Thursday, and all but “official items posted by the college” will be removed, Leslie Grinage, the college’s dean, wrote in an email to students.
“While many decorations and fixtures on doors serve as a means of useful communication between peers, we are also aware that some can have the unintended effect of isolating people who hold different views and beliefs,” she wrote.
Since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October, Barnard has taken a series of steps to limit the spaces where students and faculty can express themselves publicly. These measures are intended to cover all types of political speech, but they come at a time when Barnard and other campuses are dealing with controversy and lawsuits over pro-Palestinian speech that some believe is anti-Semitic.
The policy changes have prompted an especially strong response at Barnard, a women’s college with a reputation as a progressive institution that values activism.
Administrators have said they want to maintain protections for free speech “while ensuring we promote a safe, respectful and inclusive campus environment,” said Kelli Murray, the university’s chief administrator. wrote when describing new protest protocols last week.
In November, Barnard tightened editorial control over academic department websites after one department posted a notice a message of solidarity with Palestinians. The New York Civil Liberties Union has sent a letter to the school warning that this measure infringes on academic freedom.
Last week, the college issued detailed restrictions on campus protests. Demonstrations are allowed on one campus lawn, Futter Field, between 2:00 PM and 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday. Requests for demonstrations must be submitted 48 hours in advance. No amplification devices or “sound machines” – including pots, pans and musical instruments – are allowed.
The protest policy is intended to “protect the opportunity for free expression while ensuring that our campus can remain a place of learning and living,” Jennifer Fondiller, Barnard’s vice president of communications, said in a statement Thursday. She said the door policy was intended to remind students of “the existing housing rules so that all students feel safe and comfortable where they live.”
Columbia University, to which Barnard is affiliated, also announced a new demonstration policy. Protests on Columbia’s campus can now take place on weekdays from noon to 6 p.m. in several designated “demonstration areas.”
Barnard administrators argue that the new protest rules are actually less restrictive than a previous rule that required 28 days’ notice. Still, some teachers have become increasingly concerned. A faculty meeting last week in Barnard was dominated by opposition to the new rules, which some professors said seemed designed to suck the energy out of the protests.
“Did Rosa Parks ask if it was the right time to sit in the wrong seat?” said Nara Milanich, a Barnard history professor who is critical of the changes. “I mean, it’s just maddening.”
Maryam Iqbal, a freshman and pro-Palestinian organizer, said she had no plans to remove her door art despite the new rule. She has even added more pro-Palestinian stickers, as well as decals accusing the council of censoring freedom of speech, and is waiting to see what happens.
On Thursday, the college placed a note under her door reminding her to remove the decorations or request an exemption. That evening, someone tore down one of her signs—the one directly critical of Barnard’s president Laura Rosenbury—but left the others behind.
“I don’t understand the idea of just taking away the furnishings of a dormitory because you’re going to isolate someone with a different opinion,” she said. “That’s not how academia works.”
The union representing the school’s residential counselors, who live in the dorms, wrote a letter to Ms Grinage said on Wednesday they were “strongly opposed” to the new door decoration policy.
“Removing this freedom will continue to diminish the already shaky trust students have in the current Barnard administration,” the advisors wrote.
Like other university presidents, Ms. Rosenbury, who started in the role last summer, is under intense pressure to rein in pro-Palestinian expression. Last week a group of Jewish students came by filed a lawsuit against Barnard and Columbia in federal court claiming that tolerance of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism had created “a seriously hostile environment for his Jewish and Israeli students.”
They argued that the climate in the schools infringed on their civil rights by hindering their right to education. “Anti-Zionism is not merely a political movement – although many try to disguise it as such – but is a direct attack on Israel as a Jewish community,” the lawsuit said.
Like their fellow schools, Columbia and Barnard also face one conference investigation to anti-Semitism on campus and must submit thousands of documents about their responses to the investigation. A congressional hearing in December led to the resignations of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard after they hedged in response to questions about whether they would discipline students if they called for the genocide of Jews.
Barnard has also tried to exert more control over faculty-sponsored events, several professors said. It took Debbie Becher, a professor of sociology, to do it months to get an official green light to show “Israelism”, a film about the Jewish disillusionment with Zionism that has become a political lightning rod. She said she didn’t get the final decision until the last minute.
“It’s as if the government thinks it can choreograph all the activities that could cause a problem for them,” she said. “And by problem I mean someone who complains.”
Unlike Columbia across Broadway, where protests and counter-protests over the war between Israel and Hamas are common, only one major pro-Palestinian demonstration specifically in Barnard has been held since the war began. About 20 students among the many others who attended the December 11 protest were subsequently called into disciplinary proceedings for attending an unauthorized protest. The Columbia Spectator reported.
Some received warnings; Others were told the procedure was purely informational and were rejected. Most were students of color, raising concerns about uneven enforcement, said teachers and students who attended the hearings.
The new restrictions have made some pro-Palestinian students reluctant to demonstrate on campus.
“It was really disheartening,” Anagha Ram, a third-year computer science major who sat outside Milbank Hall on Wednesday, said of the restrictions in general. It seemed, she said, that “they cared more about financial aid and donations and money and things like that than they cared about their students.”
Pro-Palestinian student groups are now calling for a boycott of official university events. The Barnard Bulletin posted a video Wednesday of what it called a new form of protest: graffiti on bathroom walls reading “The Students Will Not Be Silenced” and “Free Palestine.”
Izzy Lapidus, a senior, has worked in recording and recording for many years videos on social media about how much she loves Barnard. Now she said, “I have often cried over what became of Barnard.”
She was one of several students called to an investigative meeting after attending the protest in December, and was angry at how the meetings seemed designed to scare students.
“There are so many things that go directly against what Barnard’s mission claims to be and what this school is proud of,” she said.
Liset Cruz reporting contributed.