IU stopped enforcing the ban on late-night protests

After Indiana University administrators called in state troopers to remove a pro-Palestinian encampment in the spring — setting off nationally televised scenes of pandemonium in Bloomington, where police in riot gear arrested demonstrators — the IU Board of Trustees established a new policy on expression.

Even before the crackdown, the administration banned camping on campus. After that, the officials doubledadding a number of new restrictions that went into effect on August 1. Among them: a ban on “expressive activity” between 11pm and 6am.

Since then, many faculty, staff, students and others have intentionally violated the ban, said Ben Robinson, senior associate professor of Germanic studies at IU. Robinson said he and others held protest “vigils” every Sunday after 11 p.m., and hundreds of people took part.

But this Sunday will be the last vigil, Robinson said, because, in a surprising turn of events, the university has given its tacit approval.

“Unamplified sound is fine after 11 p.m., as are candles assuming they are not anchored to any kind of ground,” an IU Event Management employee wrote in an email to a vigil organizer that Robinson to shared with Inside the Upper Ed. “AKA as long as you only use hand candles it’s fine. Let me know if you need anything else!”

Mark Bode, an IU spokesman, did not provide an interview Monday. He originally responded to Inside the Upper EdMonday’s one-sentence inquiry: “There has been no change to the expressive activities policy.”

When he received the message from IU Event Management, Bode wrote in a follow-up email that there was a request “for an event scheduled to begin at 10:30 p.m. … The requester did not mark the event as expressive activity , and the applicant’s questions were answered with this understanding. According to the Expressive Activities Policy, expressive activity is allowed until 11:00 p.m. Event Management will contact the applicant to provide an opportunity to update the submission.”

Robinson agrees the policy is still on the books and said he is a plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit to formally overturn the ban; a hearing is scheduled for Nov. 15. But he is already declaring victory in one sense.

“Our moral spirit, our community’s concern for free speech had the firmness that forced them to back down on enforcement,” said Robinson, a Jewish supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israeli policy.

Robinson said he is among about 20 people who previously received letters of reprimand for violating the policy. However, when the ESPN College game day came to Bloomington last month for an IU-University of Washington football game, students camped out and celebrated past 11 p.m.

“Their politics are in shambles — they don’t have the conviction behind them,” Robinson said. “I have already seen their dishonesty; what we see now is their lack of courage.”

Russ Skiba, IU Bloomington professor emeritus, wrote in an email Monday that the administration has shown other signs of a change in approach. “Neither IUPD nor administration representatives were present at the most recent vigil, the first time it happened,” Skiba wrote. “From our perspective, the administration has clearly been backed into a corner by the media’s inconsistency in enforcement between vigils and football holidays, an inconsistency that runs afoul of state law governing expressive activity policies.”

If officials have stopped enforcing the policy, “it’s certainly the responsibility of the university to clarify that,” said Risa Lieberwitz, a professor of labor and employment law at Cornell University.

“We’ve seen universities across the country adopt overly broad and overly restrictive speech policies … especially since last summer,” said Lieberwitz, who is also a member of the American Association of University Professors’ Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee A.

While the vigils may be ending, protests against the broader policy won’t, Robinson said.

“We are very committed to returning to a bona fide policy that favors speech,” he said. “When power does not meet obedience, it begins to tremble.”