April 4, 2024 | NEWS | By Seth Jahraus
Around 50 Colorado College students and staff members crammed into the Dean of Faculty’s office lobby in Armstrong Hall for over five-and-a-half hours on the afternoon of March 29. The group gathered outside a small conference room in a show of support to the 12 students inside who faced conduct case hearings for their participation in the library sit-in on March 3.
Over 20 professors, staff and alumni attended Friday’s gathering, making it the largest non-student demonstration the campus has seen since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas War. Members of the gathering held Palestinian flags and displayed signs referencing watermelons and bombs. However, the group was primarily focused on the protection of their students’ freedom of speech.
“The part that’s breaking my heart is that as I see students recognizing they shouldn’t need to ask permission from the grownups to engage the very right that we’re supposedly teaching you how to engage … they are having demonstrations and then getting the hammer down on them,” psychology professor Tomi-Ann Roberts said.
Students within the hearing had allegedly violated the Colorado College Freedom of Expression Policy as their demonstration had attempted to “disrupt the normal business or activities of the College” according to the administration.
Heidi R. Lewis, a Colorado College feminist and gender studies professor and the president of the National Women’s Studies Association, published a blog to the NWSA website interrogating the College’s approach to the student demonstrations. The Colorado College Students for Justice in Palestine uploaded the blog post to their Instagram account. The post has reached over 300 shares on the app and has made its way into the Instagram stories of several CC students.
“What, however, is a protest if not an intentional disruption? Why is speaking out against war and Zionist colonization an occasion for disciplinary messaging? Why are we — the ones speaking out — being criminalized?” she wrote. “Have administrators forgotten that many of the college’s departments and programs, like Feminist & Gender Studies and Race, Ethnicity, & Migration Studies, wouldn’t exist without protest?”
Some members of Friday’s gathering have also questioned the administration’s approach to the freedom of expression mechanisms for its employees.
Future interim president Manya Whitaker sent an email out to faculty and staff working under the office of the president ahead of the International Women’s Day march that occurred on March 8. “Faculty and staff should carefully consider whether their participation in protests and demonstrations will affect their ability to effectively perform their role at the College,” she wrote.
The email outlined various reasons why an employee’s participation in the demonstration could affect their role on campus. Whitaker stated how students may feel uncomfortable taking a professor’s class due to “conflicting personal views/values.” She also wrote about how a supervisee or fellow employee may not feel comfortable talking with someone who they know holds conflicting ideas.
Whitaker was unable to be reached for comment prior to this article’s publishing.
Some faculty members viewed Whitaker’s email as a method of curbing staff demonstrations.
“To pretend that there is only one political action and that the silencing of others is not also a political action… I think naive is the most generous word one could say,” history professor Jane Murphy said.
Murphy highlighted the irony of the College’s stance and its usage of the Freedom of Expression Policy where “it’s preferable that you not express.”
Members of Friday’s demonstration forwarded Murphy’s sentiment in an open letter to the Colorado College board of trustees and administration. The letter can be found in the Opinion section of The Catalyst website, or in the edition hyperlink at the top of this article.
“Being part of a community that values the freedom of expression involves tolerating a certain level of disagreement and disruption,” it read.
The letter contained a set of recommended actions for the college. The “Concerned Colorado College Faculty” who signed the letter called for a specification of what constitutes the “regular business and activities of the College” portion of the Freedom of Expression Policy. The group also hoped for consistent “oversight” of the Freedom of Expression Policy to ensure that it is implemented in an objective manner that reflects the College’s “lenses of antiracism and mental health and wellbeing.”
Students who were found responsible for their actions by the conduct case panel have been assigned an essay to be completed before April 8. The essay must answer a set list of questions provided by the dean of students office.
Questions include: “What impact did your choice to violate institutional policy have (consider people directly and indirectly involved)?” and “What will you do moving forward to ensure that [your participation] in demonstrations, protests, activities, and other expression of ideas that do not violate institutional policy and regular operations of the college?”
In addition to answering the questions provided, students must make sure their essay maintains a certain standard of quality. The dean of students office stated that “only college-level work will be accepted.” Such work requires proper grammar and spelling, a cohesive organization of content and a correct usage of sentence structure. Students must also submit their essays in 12-point Times New Roman font and a cover page. Lastly, the essay must “use appropriate language.”
If the charged students fail to properly complete their essay, the sanction provided by the conduct panel will remain open according to Darrel Stinson, the Assistant Dean of Students.
“The college is leveraging its ambiguous policies … to disproportionately penalize anti-oppression activism and attempt to suppress the content of our protests and demands,” said Zianah Griffin ‘24, a student found responsible for their participation in the library sit-in. “In other words, I will not be backing down.”
Griffin feels that the College is failing to consider the mental states of the student activists in its focus on discipline. Griffin said that they have felt a heightened surveillance presence around themself and fellow classmates since their first participation in ceasefire demonstrations. They gave examples of fellow students’ phone cameras being constantly pointed in their direction as well as hateful messages on YikYak receiving hundreds of upvotes at their expense.
“The division of student life and all our members within it are dedicated to helping students be successful,” said Dean of Students Lacy Karpilo.
Karpilo highlighted the college’s desire as a whole to mold the success and security of all CC students, a sentiment shared by the Dean of the College, Pedro de Araujo, in a previous article for The Catalyst.
Despite the circumstances of the situation, professors and students have appreciated the opportunity to bridge the gap between teacher and learner.
“Students are accustomed to thinking that we faculty are in charge and I think now students are realizing that we are not,” Roberts said. “The move we need to make right now is sort of unprecedented … which is for students and faculty to see how much we have in common, and that we are the most important constituency at this institution.”
Griffin said they received great pleasure witnessing faculty members they had never seen before in the gathering outside of the conference room.
“Faculty are as pissed, if not more pissed and scared as students are,” Griffin said.
As the death toll in Gaza reaches 32,000, Israel has expressed little intent to enact a ceasefire. If the students and faculty interviewed by The Catalyst maintain their intentions, the campus and administration should expect more demonstrations to take place within the College in the near future.
“If the aforementioned communique and practices are any indication of Colorado College’s shifting values, my colleagues, students, and I, while certainly more privileged than others, are likely in for the educational and professional fight of our lives,” wrote Lewis in her blog post.