UC’s New Guidance on Campus Protests Bans Encampments, Face Masks

The University of California (UC) released new guidance on handling protests for the upcoming school year. It directs campuses to reinforce policies that prohibit encampments and unauthorized structures, blocking the free movement of students, and masking that conceals identity.

As students prepare to return to campus for the fall semester, UC President Michael V. Drake laid out the steps the university will take to “ensure a safe, inclusive campus climate” while maintaining a “free exchange of ideas” across campus.

“We make every effort to nurture free expression, and we provide countless opportunities and venues for our students, faculty, other academic appointees, and staff to safely and lawfully share their diverse viewpoints and beliefs,” he said in a letter to the community.

Drake stressed the importance of enforcing the new policies consistently across all 10 campuses within the university system.

“Clear communication and consistent application of policies and laws are key to achieving the delicate but essential balance between free speech rights and the need to protect the safety of our community and maintain critical university operations,” he said.

Drake further added that the university “make(s) every effort to nurture free expression,” noting that the Free Speech Movement originated at UC.

All new campus guidance is consistent with the First Amendment, Zach Greenberg, First Amendment attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told BestColleges.

“The university seems to take care to protect students’ free speech rights … encampments, blocking areas of campus, disrupting operations, these are generally not protected by the First Amendment,” he said.

“Universities can impose content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions on student speech, as long as they’re not targeting students based on their viewpoints or their ideas, they’re permissible under the First Amendment.”

Pro-Palestinian student groups posted about the new guidelines on social media.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters at the Berkeley, San Diego, Irvine, and Riverside campuses posted the guidelines to Instagram overlaid with the message “i ain’t reading all that. free palestine.”

Additionally, the SJP chapter at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) recently advertised a summer training program with “The People’s University for a Liberated Palestine,” offering “political education, tactical training, mutual aid, community building, and mass organizing to take back our organizing.”

The Berkeley and Merced campuses kicked off fall classes Aug. 21, with most campuses scheduled to resume classes on Sept. 22 or 23. If protests start back up this year, Greenberg recommends students planning to exercise their First Amendment rights understand the distinctions between protected and unprotected speech.

“It should be peaceful. It should be nondisruptive. It should not be violent. Students have the right to protest in the open outdoor areas of campus, but when students are engaging in violence, they’re blocking students from accessing campus, when they’re chanting over people, preventing access to their education …. that can be problematic.”

Days earlier, the California State University (CSU) system introduced similar rules governing campus demonstrations to “ensure the safety and well-being of the university community while protecting lawful free expression activities.”

Under the new systemwide Time, Place, and Manner Policy, activities such as “camping, overnight demonstrations, or overnight loitering,” “unauthorized temporary or permanent structures,” and “disguises or concealment of identity” are prohibited.

The spring semester saw nationwide demonstrations protesting university investments in the Israel-Hamas war, which has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian health authorities.

Protest encampments spread to all 10 UC campuses, with varying responses from campus administration.

Berkeley and Riverside administrators ended up agreeing to at least some of the protesting students’ demands, and UC Davis, Merced, and San Francisco’s encampments voluntarily disbanded.

However, a different outcome played out at UCLA, Irvine, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, where encampments were disbanded by law enforcement.

“While the vast majority of protests held on our campuses are peaceful and nonviolent, some of the activities we saw this past year were not,” Drake said.

UC specifically faced backlash for its handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at UCLA, where counterprotesters tried to breach the encampment’s barricade and enter, turning violent for several hours before police intervened, according to the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student-run newspaper. The night after, the encampment was torn down and more than 200 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested.

The university’s response to pro-Palestinian protests on campuses even spurred the labor union representing UC academic workers to go on a two-week strike and file multiple unfair labor practice charges against the university system.

Jewish students also criticized UC, saying the encampment “harassed Jewish students” and prevented them from accessing “critical parts of campus.” They sued UCLA, claiming that “Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith.”

A Los Angeles federal district court agreed with the students and granted an injunction against UCLA, stating that if any part of UCLA’s “ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas” becomes unavailable to specific Jewish students, UCLA “must stop providing those ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas to any students.”

UCLA initially appealed the ruling, arguing that it had no legal responsibility because protesters, not the university, blocked Jewish students’ access to the school. The attorney for UCLA dismissed their appeal on Aug. 23.

Although it remains uncertain if protests will escalate as they did in the spring, Drake says the university’s end goal is for all “community members to feel supported in their ability to express themselves” while pursuing their work on campus.

“We also want our community members to understand what’s expected of them, including a clear understanding of the principles, policies, and laws that govern our behavior on campus,” he said.