Week 8: Free speech policy protesters persist at IU Bloomington, hear report of search warrant
Sunday evening marked two months of weekly protests at Sample Gates in Bloomington, against Indiana University’s new “expressive activities” policy, which was effective Aug. 1.
Sample Gates is the spot where Kirkwood Avenue dead ends at the western edge of the Bloomington campus.
On the university campus, during the 7-hour window from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., the policy prohibits expressive activities like vigils.
The temperature of 57 F degrees with a steady 10 mph breeze, and stiffer gusts, made it a brisk Sunday night.
Hosting the vigil, as she did last week, was Heather Akou, who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit the ACLU has filed in federal court, over the constitutionality of the policy. Akou is a professor in IU’s Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design.
The ACLU has filed a lawsuit over the policy on behalf of ten plaintiffs—all of whom joined the protest in Dunn Meadow against the war in Gaza on April 25, or in the following days, according to the filed complaint.
Like she did last week, Akou read aloud a poem, this time a selection from Joy Harjo, a Native American poet and former U.S. poet laureate. The poem is called “Rabbit is Up to Tricks,” about Rabbit, who makes a clay man as a companion, who winds up wreaking destruction. The concluding lines go like this:
Forests were being mowed down all over the world.
And Rabbit had no place to play.
Rabbit’s trick had backfired.
Rabbit tried to call the clay man back,
But when the clay man wouldn’t listen
Rabbit realized he’d made a clay man with no ears.
The apparent analogy of the person with “no ears” was to the administration of Indiana University, which has developed and enforced the policy on expressive activities, over the protests of rank-and-file residents, staff, students, and faculty, like Akou.
Akou named at least two sources of the current friction: the new university policy on expressive activities (UA-10), as well as the new state law (SEA 202) on inclusion of intellectual diversity in classroom instruction.
Akou said the new policy and the state law are “changing the way this university works, and all of us are able to operate here.” She called it a “terrible, terrible situation.” She said, “The administration isn’t listening to us.”
In a repeat of the scene from last week, at 10:59 p.m., the alarm that Akou had set went off—she then crossed from the campus to the public sidewalk. Akou has been warned by the administration already, and threatened with termination if she again violates the new policy on expressive activities.
On Sunday, one of the speakers criticized SEA 202, pointing to the Dunn Meadow encampment in support of Gaza as the kind of speech that started the university’s move to regulate expressive activities. He called it “the speech decrying Israel’s genocide.” He said, “So we’re told by people who make policies like SEA 202, that we have to be neutral—we have to have all sides. No one has brought up a counterargument to genocide. There is no counter argument.”
A student involved in the protests said at Sunday’s vigil that on Thursday he had been detained by IU police as he was driving. “I was pulled over by five IUPD vehicles and around eight officers, who executed a search warrant against my phone.” He said his phone had been seized and is being held by Indiana State Police, and that his car has been impounded.
The student said the search warrant was issued over “an alleged misdemeanor mischief charge.” The student said that IU is taking measures like executing search warrants “to get us to stop and shut up about what we are seeing, about the role that our university is playing in the annihilation of the Palestinian people, about its partnerships with the Department of Defense and the Crane naval base down south.”
Also speaking on Sunday was former Bloomington mayor John Hamilton, who took as his target the time limitation of UA-10, pointing to a historic event on a different university campus exactly 60 64 years ago, down to almost the exact hour.
Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy visited the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, arriving in the wee hours of Oct. 14, but crowds had gathered outside the Michigan Union starting around 10 p.m.
It was the speech that announced the creation of the Peace Corps. From Kennedy’s remarks:
May I just say in conclusion that this college, this university, is not maintained by its alumni, by the state, merely to help its graduates have an economic advantage in the life struggle. There is certainly a greater purpose, and I’m sure you recognize it. And, therefore, I do not apologize for asking for your support in this campaign. I come here tonight, asking for your support for this country over the next decade.
About university campuses at a late hour at night, Hamilton said, “That’s what’s supposed to happen at universities!” Hamilton added, “You should express yourself, fight for what you care about.”
About UA-10, Hamilton said, “It is painful to see institutions stumble, make mistakes and not recognize them.” He added, “I’m not a constitutional scholar—I’m not here to talk about whether what is being done is constitutional.”
But Hamilton is married to a constitutional scholar, Dawn Johnsen, who is professor of law at IU’s Mauer School.
In her remarks on Sunday, Johnsen told the crowd she’d been teaching First Amendment law for 25 years. “There’s some very fundamental principles that I think are clear to anyone who has studied basic American history, First Amendment, free speech: If the government, including the university, desires to limit our expressive activity, it has to do so with great care.”
Johnsen continued, “It cannot do so in a way that is overbroad,” adding that the government cannot regulate speech “in a way that is vague, so we don’t know what is and what is not prohibited.” Johnsen thinks it’s inappropriate for the university to be proceeding in any disciplinary way against individuals on the basis of a policy that is unconstitutionally overbroad.
The contention that the timeframe in UA-10 is “overbroad” is a key claim in the ACLU’s lawsuit.
All of the briefs have now been filed in connection with motion for a preliminary injunction, which was filed on Sept. 16.
On Oct. 1, the university filed its response to the ACLU’s motion for a preliminary injunction. On Oct. 7, the ACLU filed its reply to the university’s response.
That means all the briefs are now filed in connection with the motion for a preliminary injunction, under the case management plan.
