Silencing Protest on Campus

By John K. Wilson

This fall, protestors against military recruiters have encountered what antiwar activists are calling “a wave of repression.” At half a dozen different campuses, students have faced criminal charges or possible expulsion for criticizing military recruiters and the Bush Administration. On December 6, protesters around the country will hold events criticizing military recruiters and the US military’s homophobic policies. That same day, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments in FAIR v. Rumsfeld, a case where private universities have sued the government’s efforts to compel any college receiving federal funds to obey a law requiring full access to campus for military recruiters even when they violate campus antidiscrimination policies.

At Hampton University, a historically black college in Virginia, seven students are being threatened with expulsion for handing out “unapproved fliers” to students and participating in campus activities critical of the Bush Administration.

On Wednesday November 2, 2005, a group of progressive Hampton students (who had been repeatedly denied approval to form an official student group) affiliated with Amnesty International, United Students Against Sweatshops, and the Campus Anti-War Network held a student walk-out and teach in on “the issues of New Orleans urban renewal, AIDS crisis, homophobia, the prison industrial complex, the war in Iraq, and the crisis in Sudan.” About 100 students gathered at the student center for speeches, poetry, and musical performances. However, campus police banned the event and took the IDs of students involved. Later, one student was threatened with expulsion if he did not reveal the names of others in the group.

The seven students received notice late on a Friday afternoon and throughout the weekend of a disciplinary hearing to be held the next Monday morning; after objections against this violation of due process, the hearing was postponed. The students are charged with violating the code of student conduct by "actions to cajole or proselytize students," "distributing and/or posting unauthorized information," and "violating the administrative guidelines for student demonstrations” (which require pre-approval for all protests from the Administration).

The repression of student rights continues at Hampton. When students met with local TV media in a shopping center owned by the administration, campus security threw out the reporters. The attacks on student rights are common at Hampton in recent years. In 2002, Hampton students sought to bring ISU alum (and current instructor) Taye Wolde-Semayat to campus. Hampton administrators banned Dr. Taye from speaking on campus, and the students had to arrange carpools to bring hundreds of students to a local church in order to hear Taye speak. Last year, Hampton administrators banned the student newspaper, The Hampton Script, because it ran a story critical of health code violations in the cafeteria and ran a response from the president inside the newspaper instead of on page 1.

In just two days in September 2005, college officials at three different campuses illegally banned protests and violently attacked students who tried to protest military recruiters. A peaceful protest of an Army Recruiting Table at Holyoke Community College’s cafeteria on September 29, 2005 was interrupted by violence from campus police. Peter Mascaro, head of campus security, grabbed a sign away from a student that read “Cops are hypocrites” because he considered it “inappropriate.” Then Officer Scott Landry (the advisor to the College Republicans, who had gathered to urge the police to attack the students), grabbed the student, and with the help of three other officers, lifted the student off the ground and assaulted him. When another student, Charles Peterson, peaceably came to the student’s defense, the police put him in a headlock, and then sprayed mace in his face. The next day, Peterson was banned from stepping foot on campus, preventing him from working at his campus job and prohibiting him from attending classes, without any due process.

Also on September 29, George Mason University student Tariq Khan, an Air Force veteran, stood near a recruiting table for the Marines while wearing signs that said “Recruiters tell lies. Don’t be fooled” and “U.S. out of Iraq, Israel out of Palestine, U.S. out of North America.” Khan was surrounded by three conservative students who yelled at him and ripped off one of his signs. Instead of defending Khan’s rights, a campus police officer attacked Khan without reason, throwing him on the ground and putting him in a choke-hold. Khan was handcuffed, dragged to a police car, denied medical treatment, and threatened with pepper spray and being hung by his feet from the ceiling. Criminal charges against Khan were eventually dropped.

At Kent State University, officials cancelled a disciplinary hearing against Dave Airhart, a student who participated in a rock climbing wall activity on Oct. 29 sponsored by military recruiters and then hung a "Kent Ohio 4 Peace" banner after he reached the top of the climbing wall.

However, the threat of discipline for campus protests has a chilling effect on free expression. On September 28, 2005, University of Wisconsin at Madison students were banned from attending an open career fair in the student center because they had signs critical of military recruiters. A campus policy banning “boisterous” behavior was invoked to stop the protest. After Madison students held a Nov. 2 protest against military recruiters, administrators are now threatening to ban the anti-war student group, Stop the War, from campus (and punish its leaders) because some high-school students attending the protest knocked on the locked doors of the building with the Military Science Department and a 14-year-old was accused of throwing a penny at a window.

At a Nov. 9 job fair at Harold Washington College in Chicago, campus security forcibly removed two students for asking critical questions of military recruiters. The students, who did not have any signs or banners, were thrown out even though one of the military recruiters told the security officers, “They’re not bothering me at all. They can stay, they’re fine.”

According to the students at the job fair in a report on campusantiwar.net, “When we started videotaping Officer Bowens's threats to us, he grabbed the camera, telling us to turn it off. We managed to wrest it away from him, so he dragged the student cameraman, Jenell Holden, out of the job fair by his bicep. Next, Security Officer Leon Bowens and his assistant Herbert Wilson went for Chicago City Colleges student Angie Haban, each grabbing her by an arm, and dragged her out of the job fair, into the hallway, and out the back door onto the loading dock, meanwhile elbowing her in the chin. She sustained bruises to her left upper arm.” The students also accuse security officers of breaking up conversations between students in the lounge area, tearing down approved fliers, and calling police on students legally passing out fliers in front of the campus building.

The cascade of repression on college campuses this fall has reached levels unseen since the Vietnam War era. In many ways, today’s attacks on the right to protest may be worse. Even during the 1960s, few administrators would have dared to ban students from engaging in peaceful, legal protests against the government. Now students are facing arrest for asking questions and expulsion for handing out “unauthorized” fliers.