If enacted, California AB 2551 would require public universities, including UCLA (above), to seek greater community feedback about their current free expression policies.
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Soon after college students across the country set up encampments to protest the war in Gaza in 2024, many institutions revised or implemented new policies that restricted the time, place and manner in which students can protest. Two years later, some universities are revisiting their policies as a new crop of students critique the restrictions.
In late August, the University of Hawai’i withdrew an interim time, place and manner policy it had implemented just two months earlier, citing student concerns. The new policy—which limited chalking and banned sit-ins and encampments—was intended to provide “clear, viewpoint-neutral guidelines that would protect expressive rights while ensuring our campuses remain safe, accessible and functional for teaching and learning,” according to an Aug. 26 message from system university President Wendy Hensel.
Just five days before Hensel announced the reversal, the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawai’i wrote to her, urging amendments to the policy and warning that the new restrictions would stymie student speech.
“We are concerned about the chilling effect that a restrictive policy like this one will have on protests,” the Hawai’i ACLU wrote. “We are especially concerned by the 25-foot buffer zones and the extremely restrictive policies regarding specific forms of protest, including chalking, sit-ins, and posting written materials. Taken together, these policies will restrict most forms of student speech and likely discourage students from engaging in protest activity altogether.”
Hensel had heard similar critiques of the chalking restrictions, 25-foot setbacks and 60-decibel limits from students, faculty and staff members, according to her message.
“Your concerns have been heard. I am directing the withdrawal of the interim [time, place and manner] policy and procedures, effective immediately,” she wrote. “At the University of Hawai’i, our community has a rich, proud history of peaceful protest. It is essential that our policies not only withstand constitutional scrutiny on paper, but also maintain the trust and confidence of the people they govern.”
Such openness to community feedback represents a welcome shift, said Ryan Ansloan, senior program counsel for the policy reform team at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
“There has been an interesting push and pull that seems different from what we saw last year and the year before,” Ansloan said. “It suggests that there’s a little bit less energy behind moves to put in place more restrictive protest policies, and that would be encouraging.”
The University of Hawai’i will continue to develop new permanent time, place and manner rules, but, in the meantime, it will enforce its 2014 free expression policy, which does not include specific restrictions on noise levels, chalking or how far away student speech events must be from campus buildings.
The University of Washington is also actively revising its protest policy. Officials proposed changing the Student Code of Conduct in July to make concealing one’s identity during a protest an aggravating factor in disciplinary decisions and to allow external contractors to handle disciplinary appeals, according to The Seattle Times.
The university—which was home to pro-Palestinian encampments in 2024—proposed the new rules not long after the Department of Justice began an investigation into what it called the university’s “handling of antisemitism” in April. The Board of Regents was scheduled to vote on the new rules at its Sept. 9 meeting, but university President Robert Jones said earlier this month that he delayed the vote following student and employee criticism, KUOW reported.
Students and employees told KUOW and the Times they were frustrated that the university considered revisions to the code of conduct over the summer, when most students are away from campus. They also raised questions about why the university wants to hire external contractors for disciplinary proceedings and whom those contractors would be.
Involving external parties in disciplinary action “is something we don’t come across very often,” Ansloan said. “More often than not, disciplinary panels are made up of administrators, faculty and students, and I think that’s done because it provides a diversity of perspectives and is consistent with principles of shared governance.”
The university did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment on the proposed protest policy changes. It’s unclear if or when the board vote will be rescheduled, but university leaders told KUOW that they will consider changes to the code over the course of this academic year.
‘Empowering All Students’
The California Legislature is also revisiting campus protest policies this fall. The State Assembly and Senate earlier this month passed California Assembly Bill 2551, which asks the boards of public institutions to be more transparent about their time, place and manner restrictions. The bill now awaits a signature from Governor Gavin Newsom, but if enacted, it would require the University of California and the California State University systems to provide annual data on student code of conduct violations, including race and gender breakdowns of students who are disciplined during a protest. It would also require the universities to seek greater community feedback about their current free expression policies.
“Students of color report experiencing violent arrests at peaceful protests, targeted disciplinary actions and bureaucratic barriers that suppress their right to protest, leading many student organizers to fear severe repercussions and reprisal,” Assemblymember Sade Elhawary, the bill’s author, told The Sacramento Bee. “As a former student activist myself while I was at UCLA, I care deeply about empowering all students and protecting their abilities to organize and advocate.”
But state and university officials cannot always anticipate what will trigger campus demonstrations. Student protests are “a cyclical thing,” Ansloan said. For many students, it becomes a way “not just to make your voice heard, but to be a part of a community.”
“That may dip at some point organically, but I also absolutely think that [protest] culture is impacted by policies and administrators and can be impacted for the worse by bad policies,” he said. “If a policy is bad enough that it is having a chilling effect—even if we don’t know definitively that [the policy] is the cause—I think it is a reason to reflect on that policy and on the enforcement behind it.”
