Free speech is now something that has to be “properly organized.”
A group of about 40 American University students protesting tuition hikes outside a University Budget Committee meeting were forced to leave because they didn’t have a permit to silently protest, student paper The Eagle reported. The students were lined up in a hallway outside of the meeting.
AU’s public safety officers kicked the students out because it had not been organized through “correct channels” and a student told the paper that one officer held up a pair of handcuffs and shook them at the students until they cleared the area.
“Public Safety officers asked students to disband with the claim that the action needed to be organized through Student Activities. There is no way to book a hallway through 25Live, and students were completely in our right to stand silently in that hallway,” Katie Kirchner, a senior in the School of Communication who was a part of the protest, said in an email.
“The most alarming part of this situation is how escalatory Public Safety acted when students were peaceful and respectful. I don’t know what prompted them to take out the handcuffs; students were simply lining one side of a hallway silently.”
AU officials believe this was the appropriate way to handle the situation.
“At no time during this protest did any public safety officers indicate that anyone would be arrested,” Kelly Alexander, the director of public relations at AU, told The Eagle. “The students who gathered were allowed to present the letter they brought with them to the Provost. Eventually the students were asked to leave as they did not have the required request/permit to protest.”
