A Palestinian flag is seen on a bicycle outdoors Sayles Corridor at Brown College on April 30, 2024. (Photograph by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Present)
The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island is asking on Brown College to reinstate College students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), based on a letter sent Wednesday to the varsity’s president.
The message to Brown College President Christina H. Paxson was prompted by the ACLU’s latest acquisition of a university communication which detailed how, in October 2024, the SJP was banned from holding conferences, attending different scholar teams’ occasions, and from utilizing its organizational identify after a pro-Palestine protest on campus.
“We discover your administration’s actions in opposition to the SJP deeply troubling, as we imagine they immediately contradict the College’s core mission and solid a chill on campus free speech,” the ACLU’s letter reads. “An necessary, if controversial, scholar political group has been utterly silenced on campus, all earlier than having any formal alternative to contest the allegations lodged in opposition to it.”
ACLU Govt Director Steven Brown and Rachel Lee and Stephen Robinson, the co-presidents of Brown’s ACLU chapter, signed the letter.
On Oct. 24, 2024, Koren Bakkegard, the varsity’s affiliate vice chairman for campus life and dean of scholars, notified scholar protest leaders that their group was suspended pending a college evaluation. Bakkegard demanded that SJP members “should stop all group actions” primarily based on alleged misconduct throughout an SJP rally on Oct. 18, 2024.
Based on Bakkegard’s letter, the rally, which the varsity approved, was to happen on the Faunce Steps and a portion of the campus’ School Inexperienced. “A lot of what came about as a part of the occasion was in step with submitted occasion plans and with coverage and neighborhood expectations concerning protest and demonstration,” Bakkegard wrote.
However issues modified when protestors marched outdoors the campus inexperienced as a part of the occasion, based on Bakkegard’s account. The dean alleged that there have been reviews of protestors banging on and bodily blocking automobiles, screaming and cursing at individuals at shut vary, utilizing a racial slur and “screaming at people whereas filming them.”
The ACLU contends Brown didn’t cite particular coverage violations that warranted banning the complete group, including the executive reprimand “affords no clarification as to why the entire misconduct is being attributed at this stage to SJP versus explicit people.”
“Whereas we are able to envision circumstances when scholar teams ought to be held chargeable for the misbehavior of its members, some measure of cause is required to stop the interim imposition of group punishment due solely to what will be the unsanctioned habits of some people (reminiscent of, on this case, the purported use of a racial epithet),” the ACLU letter reads. “In any other case, each scholar group’s existence is on the mercy of its least accountable member.”
The letter additionally warns that prohibiting the group may discourage scholar activism at Brown: “By this motion in opposition to SJP, the College has given to itself the distinctive energy to undercut any political group on campus on an interim foundation.”
When requested for remark Wednesday, Brian Clark, a Brown College spokesperson, acknowledged the varsity has obtained the ACLU letter.
“Whereas we admire the curiosity, we don’t work by the information media to handle neighborhood considerations or questions — fairly, we worth direct engagement, and our response will come on to the ACLU representatives, together with the Brown scholar chapter leaders, who had been in contact,” Clark wrote.
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