Anna Whiting
Contributing Writer
Wooster has a long history of protest, both on and off campus. Administrators love to point towards the Galpin Takeover of 1989 as a point of pride at students’ civic engagement but now want to stifle our abilities to do similar kinds of protests. My question is “why now?” Why has the administration suddenly decided that after nearly 160 years as an institution, after countless peaceful protests, we suddenly need guidelines about how to properly protest? It’s time that we call out these protest guidelines for what they are: an attempt by administration to quash speech they don’t like by claiming their personal discomfort as a safety concern.
Anne McCall justified these guidelines by stating that during her inauguration, “people were terrified because they couldn’t see what was going on … there were people, because of the country we live in, who thought that there was about to be a mass killing” carried out by Black student protestors speaking against racism on campus. Who was scared? Why did they think there would be a “mass killing?” The answer is simple — because Black students were doing something that made upper class white people uncomfortable.
Later, a mass email about a protest against the ongoing genocide in Palestine was deleted from every inbox on this campus. A few weeks ago, the Divestment Coalition protested at a Board of Trustees meeting, urging the college to divest from companies complicit in the ongoing genocide in Palestine. These issues may be controversial and uncomfortable to talk about for those who disagree with these political positions, but we must not conflate discomfort with danger, as the administration is doing with these guidelines. Rather, we must move towards the issues that make us uncomfortable and listen to those who have been historically marginalized, those who live in bodies that make them constantly unsafe due to oppression.
I have never heard of a student feeling unsafe due to protests happening on Wooster’s campus. I have never heard of an assault at a protest, a person getting catcalled at a protest, a person being called slurs at a protest, a person getting shot with a BB gun at a protest. But while walking down Beall Ave., I have been shot at with a BB gun. I have been cat-called, called slurs and followed by cars. It is only worse for students who are not white, who are visibly disabled, who are visibly trans or gender nonconforming. But I don’t need to register 72 hours in advance to walk down Beall Ave. I don’t need to meet with Dean Reid to be coached on best practices to walk down Beall Ave.
The real safety concern comes not from protests themselves, but from the increased surveillance of students participating in protests. The people who participate in protests are those who are the most marginalized, who have the least access to official institutional channels of change. And those are our students of color, our international students, our disabled students, our queer students. These are also the students most likely to experience police brutality, bias in school disciplinary proceedings, or even to lose student visas if a conduct report is filed against them.
The existence of protest guidelines poses a danger to students and faculty, a danger to our rights and a danger to our ability to express opinions that go against those of administration. Students and faculty have already expressed their dissatisfaction with the existence of these guidelines. Faculty explicitly voted against the adoption of protest guidelines. It’s time for administration to listen.