Though students are on summer recess, Harvard administrators have continued to grapple with the past academic year’s campus chaos. On August 1, executive vice president Meredith Weenick shared an updated slate of rules governing shared campus spaces. Prepared by the Harvard Office of the General Counsel and the Campus Space Working Group, the “Campus Use Rules” centralize many regulations that were already in place across the University, the document says.
Many of the new rules are routine and commonsense (students generally are not allowed to drink alcohol during university-wide events, use illegal drugs on campus, or start fires). But several regulations provide grounds for the University to restrict student protests like this spring’s 20-day pro-Palestine encampment. Before chalking on a sidewalk, pitching a tent, putting up an art exhibit, or using a public space, students must receive administrative approval, or else they may face consequences.
The New Rules
The following rules are among those included in the document:
- Booking event space: “Requests to use space (indoor or outdoor) must be submitted in advance for approval….Approval of a request to use space should not be read as an endorsement of the event or its content.”
- Building access/free flow of traffic: Events must not block entry to or movement within “buildings, classrooms, administrative offices, or other spaces.” Students may not block traffic (motor vehicles, bicycles, or pedestrians).
- Camping: Camping is not allowed without permission, regardless of time or whether tents are used.
- Chalking: “Individuals and organizations are not permitted to chalk, paint, engrave, or otherwise write or draw on any University property without prior written approval….Any such unauthorized markings will be removed.”
- Exhibits/displays: “Campus exhibits or displays that are to be shown outside of a residential unit,” including lighting projections, must be approved. Exhibits are “generally” not allowed to “affix any items to University property,” including flag poles.
- University identification cards: “All Harvard affiliates, including but not limited to faculty, staff, and students, must present a valid Harvard University identification card at the request of any properly identified University official.”
- Noise: “Excessive noise may not disrupt the campus residences, academic spaces, childcare facilities, or University offices. Amplified sound is not permitted without prior approval including any necessary municipal permits, and requests for amplified sound will not be approved during reading or exam periods.”
- Sponsorship: All events require a Harvard sponsor. “Co-sponsorship of an event by a Harvard affiliate or Harvard affiliate organization with a non-Harvard or unrecognized student group or individuals generally is not permitted on campus, nor is sponsorship by proxy, unless explicitly permissible under a local policy and if approval has been obtained to use the campus space in question.”
Organizations and individuals who do not comply with the rules, the document says, “may be held financially responsible for any resulting costs” and may be disciplined.
Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, the organization that led the spring encampment, posted on Instagram about the new rules a few days before they were formally announced. “Not reading that, Free Palestine,” they wrote.
At the end of August, students will return to campus—at which point the community will begin to learn how the new regulations affect student protests.
Update Friday, August 2, 5:00 P.M.: A Harvard spokesperson emphasized that most of the rules within the document are not new, but instead are “reflective of already existing rules and policies.”
The New Rules in Perspective
In the meantime, the new rules themselves raise interesting questions. According to Weenick’s message to the community, the rules were compiled by “a cross-University Working Group consisting of administrative deans, student services leaders, and events and facilities officers.” Members were not identified, but conspicuously do not include any faculty input. Since the rules may affect what are commonly perceived as speech acts (such as chalking messages on a sidewalk), some faculty members may object to the substance and to the wholly administrative composition of the working group.
The rules may also lead to practical difficulties. To pose a seemingly trivial example, but one with wider implications: Will students be sanctioned for chalking a greeting to first-years when they move in later this month, or a Valentine’s Day message to a sweetheart? If they are not, but are sanctioned for messages encouraging peers to vote, endorsing a political candidate, or taking sides in a controversial war, what will that say about speech on campus? And how are Campus Services staff members expected to make those decisions and enforce them?
Harvard’s new rules are part of similar moves on other campuses, as institutions respond to the fierce divisions over the war in the Middle East since last October 7. The University of Pennsylvania issued temporary rules banning campus encampments and is undertaking a wider review of its “open expression” policies, according to Inside Higher Education. And Indiana University (also according to IHE) adopted a new policy—in some ways less restrictive than Harvard’s new rules—that “bans camping that’s not part of a university event; prohibits ‘expressive activity’ outside of 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.; limits water-soluble chalk to sidewalks; forbids affixing ‘signs and symbols’ to the ground, university buildings, flagpoles and other structures; bans ‘light projections’ without university approval; and forbids temporary ‘structures and/or mass physical objects’ without university approval, which must be requested at least 10 days in advance.” Student violators face punishments ranging up to expulsion, and staff members found to have violated the policies could be fired.
Read Harvard’s full set of campus-use rules here.
