Formed partly in response to the events of fall 2015, the Ad Hoc Joint Committee on Protests, Public Spaces, Free Speech and the Press [released its approved revised and new policies](http://committees.missouri.edu/protests-free-speech/new-revised-policies-04-2017.php) concerning free expression on campus. The policies were emailed out in a congratulatory note to the university community by interim Chancellor Hank Foley on April 27.
The revisions include updates to the use of facilities, sound amplification devices and posted materials policies. New regulations on camping, chalking and illuminated devices are also part of the revisions. The policies, all found in the Business Policy and Procedure Manual, go into effect June 1.
Under the new regulations, no posters or signs can be attached to the interior or exterior of university buildings, including cars, trees and light poles. Posters in classrooms must be approved by every teacher who uses the room. All signs must be posted no earlier than a week before the event and taken down within 48 hours of the event.
The sound amplification devices policy has also been updated. The old policy banned sound amplification devices everywhere without a permit, a rule committee chair Bob Jerry called “absurd” because it prevented individuals or organizations from playing music during events. The new regulations allow sound amplification devices but place restrictions on volume level and require that a permit be obtained.
Violators will be asked to turn down their music or obtain the necessary permits, Ben Trachtenberg, Faculty Council chair and co-creator of the committee said.
“The idea in general is to try to apply this in a sensible manner and not be needlessly antagonistic,” he said. Severe violations will be handled through the Office of Student Conduct.
“Flashing or rotating lights, or illuminated moving signs” are not permitted by the new regulations, in addition to a ban on chalking in a variety of places such as on brick, vertical surfaces or sidewalks near the quadrangles or MU Health Care System buildings.
Under the new rules, camping is also not permitted anywhere on university grounds, which includes sleeping in a parked vehicle “beyond the purpose of a short nap.” This policy has been in effect since the 1980s but was not enforced during the events of fall 2015, when Concerned Student 1950 members [erected a campsite](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2015/11/3/students-camp-out-support-mizzouhungerstrike/) on Carnahan Quadrangle. Jerry said this prompted the committee to make camping policy a separate regulation, BPPM 6:095. Trachtenberg explained that the ban on camping is not a ban on overnight speaking, gathering or protesting.
“We are not trying to prevent people from getting their message out,” he said. “We are simply having a safety regulation.”
Trachtenberg hopes these policies will be a model for other universities. “It’s my hope that the other three campuses in the [UM] System can benefit from the tremendous amount of work that we did at MU,” he said.
####Formation of the committee
“The charge to our committee itself refers to the events of the fall, so I think it’s correct to say that the events of the fall were the reasons that this committee was formed,” Jerry said.
In July 2015, the Missouri Legislature passed the Campus Free Expression Act, which deems all outdoor areas of public higher education institutions to be “traditional public forums.”
Traditional public forums are areas where free speech occurs and is only limited by recognized time, place and manner restrictions. Missouri was the second state in the country to ban limited free speech zones at all public universities; Virginia was first in 2014. These statutes expand the Supreme Court’s definition of free speech zones — streets, sidewalks and parks — by not limiting free speech to certain areas on campus.
Speakers Circle, which has traditionally been recognized as one such free speech zone, is not included in the use of facilities policy statement because its use falls under the jurisdiction of this new statute.
Because the statute was so new at the time of the events of fall 2015, Jerry said, not everyone understood what they meant, nor were MU’s policies as well-developed as other universities’. That “led to an understanding” that the campus needed some clearer policies.
The committee researched the policies of over 50 similar universities and identified regulations that needed more clarification.
“The point of these rules in general is to be very, very pro-free speech, to regulate where we have to with a light touch and, to the extent possible, make the rules reasonably clear,” Trachtenberg said.
####Revised use of facilities policy under debate
Some policies were revised, such as the use of facilities and poster policies, while others are brand new regulations.
Brett Johnson, assistant professor of journalism studies and First Amendment scholar, said one provision in the use of facilities policy could be unconstitutional. First adopted in 2015, the rule reads, “The sponsoring organization may be responsible for any cost incurred on the part of the University, including clean-up, special construction, set-up costs, and extra security as deemed necessary.”
Johnson said the university must remain neutral to message and allow any group to use its public spaces and that charging extra for security for messages that could incite violence could be dissuading to speakers. This is known as the heckler’s veto: a suppression of speech by the government due to a possibility of violence from a heckler.
“That charge would make it … potentially less likely for those speakers to speak,” Johnson said. “‘If we have to pay $100 or more to get our message across, we’re just not going to speak.’ What the state has done there…is capitulate to the [counter-]protesters.”
An appendix of the final revised report from the committee says that “the government may require a fee as a condition of larger groups exercising their free speech rights” but that the “government may not charge higher fees for events that are controversial or where it is foreseeable that an audience or crowd may react to the speech in a hostile way.”
####New policies on chalking and camping
The new chalking policy includes a ban on paint, aerosol spray chalk or chalk paint on any outdoor vertical surfaces within 25 feet of the entrance of a building or on Traditions Plaza. Jerry said the total ban on chalking was changed to a restriction on time, place and manner under the new policy.
“When you step back from it, when you look at the chalking rules, this is really expanding the areas in which we welcome free speech and free expression,” he said.
Johnson agreed the chalking policy is all about time, place and manner.
“It says nothing about message,” he said. “It does say you cannot engage in expression that is not permitted by the Constitution…but it does not say anywhere in there that you cannot write hateful messages or anything like that.”
“The establishment of, or attempt to establish, temporary or permanent living quarters at any location on University property” is also prohibited under the new regulation, including sleeping outdoors between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.
“In general, it is not safe to have people sleeping outdoors, especially unregulated on public spaces,” Trachtenberg said. Students are allowed to frequent public spaces at any time of day should they wish to, but “quite sensibly, the University of Missouri does not allow overnight camping on campus. You can’t sleep in your car in the parking garage, you can’t pitch a tent on the quad … Just because you doing something helps promote your message doesn’t mean the university can’t regulate it.”
Johnson said the policy complied with the the precedents set by previous Supreme Court cases, such as the 1984 case Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, which determined camping can be restricted based on time, place and manner.
“The university appears to be on the right side of Supreme Court precedent,” he said. “It has the look and feel of the time, place and manner restrictions; it’s not a restriction on content.”
This court case and others were cited in the committee’s [recommended statement released March 18, 2016](http://committees.missouri.edu/protests-free-speech/proposed-commitment-03-2016.php) as the precedents for time, place and manner restrictions.
####A model for the nation
“College campuses across the country right now are laboratories for experiments in freedom of expression; we are just one of many laboratories,” Johnson said. “What makes our case interesting is the fact that we had not just the Concerned Student protest in 2015 but also the graduate student healthcare protest. There were a lot of really successful events in 2015 that led to change.”
Jerry said the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit that works to protect civil liberties on college campuses, has been monitoring the committee’s work and has been complimentary.
“If FIRE thinks we’re doing some good things here, I think we at the very least have a work product that … if I were drafting a policy at another university, I’d like to look at the University of Missouri,” he said.
Protest and dissent are not a problem and should instead be celebrated, Jerry said.
“There’s been a lot of great things that have come out of protest and dissent in our country,” Jerry said. “What the First Amendment says and what we’re affirming is yes, everybody, if we disagree with something, protest, dissent, that’s great, but there are rules about how to do that reasonably and peaceably.”
_Edited by Sarah Hallam | shallam@themaneater.com_