President Maud S. Mandel has established an ad hoc committee that will evaluate the College’s current policies on permitted protest and posting of printed materials, the College announced in a Daily Message on Jan. 16. The Ad Hoc Committee on Posting and Protest Policies will begin its review in February and will provide recommendations to Mandel and senior staff during the spring semester.
The formation of the committee comes after a semester of heightened scrutiny of the College’s poster policy. In October, following an op-ed by Jonah Garnick ’23, copies of the Record marked with dark red painted handprints were posted throughout Paresky Center, prompting an overnight removal by the Office of Campus Life and an all-campus email from Dean of the College Gretchen Long clarifying the College’s poster policy. In December, after posters bringing attention to Israelis held hostage by Hamas militants were defaced with graffiti, Mandel wrote to the campus community that the action violated the College’s Code of Conduct and again called attention to the College’s poster guidelines.
“We all know the fall semester was a time of increased posting activity, and sometimes also controversy about that activity,” Mandel wrote in an email to the Record. “As we work toward our goals of inquiry and inclusion, this made it an appropriate time to either confirm that our policies are serving our community well or adjust them if needed.”
Associate General Counsel Laura K. Gura will chair the newly formed committee. In an interview with the Record, she emphasized the committee’s desire to honor the College’s educational mission and commitments: students’ freedom of expression and inquiry as well as a campus community in which everyone can live, learn, and thrive. “My goal is that we come out with policies that provide clear guidance to people and that reflect the [College’s] twin commitments,” Gura said.
The committee will consist of seven members, including two students, two faculty members, two staff members, and the chair. The complete roster will be published in February, according to Mandel’s announcement.
Senior Associate Dean for Administration, Finance, and Strategy Jeff Malanson, one of the two staff members who will sit on the committee, acknowledged that recent protests and posters on campus inspired the committee’s formation, but also highlighted the importance of reviewing campus policies on a regular basis.
“It’s good to periodically revisit policies and procedures to ensure that they’re meeting the College’s and the community’s needs, that they are accomplishing what they were intended to accomplish, and that there haven’t been unintended consequences,” Malanson told the Record. “I’m very comfortable with where we are right now, in terms of the policies and upholding those commitments. I also think it’s been a long time since we’ve talked about them as a College community.”
Both Malanson and Gura said that the committee plans to communicate with groups who interacted with the posting policy during the fall semester, as well as a broad group of community members who were not involved in the events of the past semester.
