After student protests and organizing against a 2007 draft of a speech policy for UCSD, students and administrators have come to tentative agreement on a new proposal.
In 2007, the University of California-San Diego administration proposed a speech policy for the campus that would have prohibited all protests and student events without prior university approval, banned political speech by university employees while on campus and effectively assigned minders to student demonstrations. Students then fought back, organizing on facebook and campus and were ultimately able to get the 2007 proposal scrapped.
Now two years later, students and administrators have come to tentative agreement on a new policy that allows students and employees to assemble, gather and speak anywhere on campus as long as they do not cause a sustained disruption, allows amplified sound from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.in certain zones across campus and allows students to use sidewalk chalk on campus. Students also won language in the beginning of the policy that requires the policy to be “enacted in a manner that minimizes the limitation on expressive activity” and were able to ensure notice and representation when future policy changes are proposed.
Though student speech advocates won with this policy, they are still concerned with a “non-affiliates” policy passed by the Board of Regents last year. That policy effectively prohibits community members from engaging in speech on campus without permission from the University or sponsorship from a student group or University entity. Beyond the potential legal problems for such a policy on a public campus, students worry it will ultimately hurt their education and involvement opportunities.
More from The Guardian at the University of California San Diego on the new policy
The policy itself