I want to take a moment and write exclusively to my John Jay and City University of New York (CUNY) communities about a policy that is dangerously close to being passed and which will take away our freedom of speech in the process. What is this policy? It is called "Freedom of Expression & Expressive Conduct" (FOE), and it is on the desks of the members on the Board of Trustee for CUNY. The FOE policy seeks to alter the current Henderson Rules to Maintain Public Order (HR) to include rather vague and overreaching clauses which put our rights in gray areas, so to speak, under the guise of seeking to provide safety for students. Thus, this article is dedicated to speaking about key points of this policy in an effort to unite the CUNY campuses and stop this horrid attempt to rob us all of our first amendment right. Please take this back to your campus and speak with your Student Government if they are not already working to fight back. So let us begin--the order of the Sections does not reflect their importance:

Section 1.3

It is also well established that certain forms of expressive conduct may appropriately be subject to reasonable restrictions as to time, place and manner.

To start off, Section 1.3 is vague and allows for a broad use of discretion when determining these "reasonable restrictions as to time, place and manner." This vagueness leaves the decision of restrictions open to implicit biases of the designee. A question we should all ask is, "What do they mean by 'reasonable?'" The wording alone, in an effort to keep it short, leaves this section as a source of unregulated power for the administration.

Section 2.1

Prohibited conduct under the Henderson Rules generally includes any behavior that adversely affects or directly threatens to negatively affect the safety of persons or their opportunity to enjoy the benefits of the University or materially disrupts or seriously threatens to materially disrupt University functions or operations, whether or not such conduct occurs on property owned, leased or licensed by the University.

This section, in my opinion, is by far the worst of the group. The first portion speaks about threats to "the safety of persons or their opportunity to enjoy the benefits of the University" but fails to explain exactly what that means. Once again, this type of vague wording leaves too much to the discretion of a designee, who is never identified in the text of the FOE. Furthermore, what is counted as "University functions or operations?" Does this only include lectures? Library functions? Movement in and out of the cafeteria? Again and again, there are no specifics given as to what the criteria are, but even this is not the concerning piece of the section. This section closes with the phrase, "whether or not such conduct occurs on property owned, leased or licensed by the University," which deserves its own time to be analyzed...whether or not such conduct occurs on property owned, leased or licensed by the University."

At first glance, this phrase may not seem all that threatening but let's put it into context to make sense. It makes sense for the University to have some say when there are demonstrations on its property; after all, that is how the game works. However, the moment this phrase includes the wording "whether or not" it becomes dangerous in regards to its potential reach. Just imagine that you are protesting off of campus, say in Washington D.C. You're out there having a good time protesting and expressing your own beliefs. However, a designee is watching and finds out that you're a student on campus, and this unnamed person does not agree with what you are saying. Well, now you run the risk of being deemed a potential threat if you're running around campus with those kinds of ideas. This is even if you were off campus to begin with. The designee can go and use their broad powers to take action against you just because the phrasing in the policy are very vague in defining the type of threat to University functioning and the actions that can be taken.

Section 3.1

Persons and groups wishing to demonstrate in public areas not owned, leased, licensed or controlled by the University, such as sidewalk adjacent to a campus, should address their requests to the New York Police Department.

This section is a way for CUNY to not only brush off any burden of protecting protesters' rights but also to ensure a form of external surveillance. It does make sense upon an initial read over, but just really think about this. The previous section, 2.1, explained how CUNY will be able to stop a protest regardless of whether or not it is on their owned property; yet, CUNY is trying to include this section in order to push off any of the work of supervising the protests. This is like trying to set up a dictatorship in which you do not even have to be remotely in contact with the group expressing their needs before you send them off with an external force. If CUNY wants to try to limit our freedom of speech, they could at least have the decency to be in contact with us.

Section 4.1

At each educational unit of CUNY, the President or his or her designee, in consultation with the Director of Public Safety or designee, will determine the point at which individuals involved in a demonstration taking place on a CUNY campus continue to exhibit prohibited conduct based upon the criteria set forth in Sections 2 and 3 of this Policy.

Now, I want you to take all of the issues from the previous sections and pile them all into Section 4.1. First, we see no attempt to specify the criteria for the "designee" to the President or Director of Public Safety. Second, this section directly states that it is at the designee's complete discretion to decide when a demonstration is, for lack of words, an inconvenience to the University, or them personally. Although the last phrase, "based upon the criteria set forth in Sections 2 and 3 of this Policy," is included to try to clean up the vagueness of this section, the sections mentioned are just as vague as you may recall. This section allows for the complete removal of any and all demonstration whenever it is deemed an inconvenience by an unidentified designee.

Section 4.2

If the prohibited conduct continues, the President or his or her designee or the Director of Public Safety or his or her designee may take appropriate action to end the prohibited conduct, including where necessary to terminate the demonstration and to seek the immediate intervention of public safety officers or external law enforcement authorities or to seek other legal remedies.

This section is where CUNY really brings out the metal bat to try and strike fear into any protestor. Reread it a couple of times and let me know what kind of feeling you get from it. Go ahead, give it one more read. Good? Okay. First off, why is the designee never identified? Secondly, what counts as "appropriate action," and "prohibited conduct?" There is so much vagueness in this language alone that it would give Plato an existential crisis. However, we should all be concerned about that last phrase at the end:

including where necessary to terminate the demonstration and to seek the immediate intervention of public safety officers or external law enforcement authorities or to seek other legal remedies.

So, essentially, this section says that the unnamed designee not only has complete power to decide when you're an inconvenience, where and when you should express your freedom of speech but also has the ability to decide what kind of force can be taken to break up a demonstration, even going to legal course of action. That's right, CUNY will be able to take legal action against protestors apart from the University's own punishment. This means you can get potentially suspended for some time and also be taken to court for a possible charge. The potential abuse of power in this one section is out of hand. Adoption of this section will spell the end of our ability to speak out against something like an increase in tuition--which ironically has been in the works before.

Section 5.1

...the distribution of written materials by hand and the setting up of tables are permissible in public areas that do not block entry or egress or interfere with the educational activities or business operations of a campus.

This section must sound like common sense, right? No one should be using tables to block entrance or exit to any space, so why add the piece of "the distribution of written materials by hand?" Essentially we're being told--vaguely of course--to stand nowhere near any doors. If we happen to be too close and are seen by our mysterious designee, well we're in for quite the adventure downtown if they decide that we're an imminent threat to the University functioning because we're handing out a flyer.

Thank you for sticking through to the end of this article, and I hope that you will go and organize against this disastrous policy. I also want to give a big thank you to the Student Council at John Jay College for providing a breakdown of the key points of the policy and their hard work on making students aware of this issue.

Written with hope for a better future,
Nuno Pereira