Jillian Beaster ’28
News Editor
beasterjro@lakeforest.edu
Towards the end of the 2023-2024 school year, certain Lake Forest Student Handbook policies were re-evaluated and expanded. The section “Demonstration, Protest, and Freedom of Expression” was updated from the 1960s “Speaker Policy,” which the school previously operated on.
Ed Whipple, Interim Vice-President for Campus Life, said the section is an expansion of the Speaker Policy that gave little guidance.
“We actually just started working with students, talking to [students] on both sides of the issue… looking at the best practices, looking at what other colleges and universities were doing, and a lot was evolving,” Whipple said. “The foundation of these policies is to promote the safety of the college, engage with the demonstrators, preserve the function of college activities, and educate and commit to working with the demonstrators and follow up on issues of concern.”
The four priorities listed in the handbook for managing a protest are promoting the safety of the College community and demonstrators, engaging with demonstrators when they bring voice to issues of concern, preserving the function of College activities (including teaching, research, administration, and other functions) both on and off campus, educating and committing to work appropriately with demonstrators and follow up on issues of concern that were identified through the protest resolution.
“If you can’t express yourself on a college or university campus, where can you in our society?” Whipple said. “I think the hallmark of higher education is the diversity of ideas and opinions, and oftentimes those [spark] protests or demonstrations, but we had put some restrictions down. You can’t be racing through the library protesting while students are trying to study and you can’t… disrupt a class, so I think the restrictions are clear.”
Entering LFC in the fall, first-year Peter Piper Huizenga is surprised about the protest policy and disagrees with the clarity and intent of the language.
“It’s purposefully vague,” Huizenga said. “If [the college] wants to [enforce] these rules, some of these rules would make sense if they were specific, but they are so vague that it is very clear the reason they’re being put in place is not actually to protect students, but to protect the college.”
Huizenga believes that certain statutes leave a lot to interpretation, creating a potentially dangerous situation for student protesters.
“In the actual handbook, with the specifics they gave, [these restrictions] could have been everywhere, or it would give them deniability everywhere,” Huizenga said.
The appearance of a new statue in the form of a fallen angel outside of the campus library has raised questions among students about its relevance to the spring campus protests. Whipple wishes to dispel the assumption that the statue erected last school year is an attempt to prevent protest.
“The statue was a gift to the college,” Whipple said. “The policy says you can’t climb on that, you can’t desecrate it, but you can protest… that policy about the structure of the statue speaks to climbing up on the statue.”
Additionally, the updated policy allows speakers on campus only if invited by official College organizations or by the College itself. Student groups inviting speakers to campus must now obtain written approval from the Associate Dean of Students and Director of the Gates Center (previously this required approval from the Dean of Students). If the Dean objects to the invitation, groups can appeal to the Vice President for Students.
The 1963 policy was supplemented in May of 1966 to include “…all invited guests of the College, or of groups within the College, will be treated with courtesy and respect and accorded the dignity due to them as human beings, no matter how strongly persons in their audiences might disagree with their ideas.”
This language of courtesy is removed in the new policy, but in section D. of “Demonstration, Protest, and Freedom of Expression,” the handbook keeps the previous policy’s language that “individuals and organizations who are not members of the College community and who seek to intervene or agitate on College property will be treated as trespassers.” There is also new added language stating “the College reserves the express right to request College identification from participants engaged in events and demonstrations on campus to determine if an individual is affiliated with the College.”
Whipple believes that because campus is private property, that privacy should apply to all facets.
“[We wanted to elaborate] more clearly about the role of people who are not members of the Lake Forest College community and whether they could join the protests or not,” Whipple said. “We do not let outsiders come into our campus community during this kind of event…this is for the community and faculty, staff and students.”
Todd Beer, Associate Professor of Sociology and Chair of Sociology and Anthropology, believes that although the initial reaction to these changes may be confusion, the update is justified.
“Our assumptions when we look at it might be, oh, this is about last year’s protests, not protests in general. But I think that if everybody reads it again that it’s a fairly reasonable policy,” Beer said.
Beer believes that the language protects students’ right to protest, while also upholding respect to the institution and other students.
“The language couches it all around the safety of everybody, not just people involved in the protest, but people not on the protest and the continued accessibility for everybody to enjoy the purpose of this institution,” Beer said. “I didn’t find the language overly aggressive…I think any time you write a policy like this there you can’t write for every scenario.”
On the other hand, Huizenga believes that the language creates an isolated relationship between the administration and the student body.
“There’s no checks and balances in place…because they’re not actually listening to the Student Government,” Huizenga said.
Huizenga suggests that the College hold a student forum where students can express feedback, ask questions, and suggest amendments.
To ensure the policy works for students, Whipple reminds students that the Handbook is reviewed annually, and student input is encouraged.
“This policy can be changed, it can be updated,” Whipple said. “Policies should be guidelines and roadmaps…this is really something that I hope provides flexibility.”
