Final month, a Brooklyn Faculty scholar was compelled to take down pro-Palestinian indicators on the door of her assigned artwork studio following an nameless criticism to campus police. Whereas the college claimed the posters violated faculty coverage, quite a few postings on different doorways had been allowed to remain up, elevating First Modification issues.
Morgan Patten is a graduate scholar within the Brooklyn Faculty artwork division. Following the October 7 Hamas assault on Israeli civilians, Patten hung two indicators on the door of her private on-campus artwork studio. One signal learn “Free Palestine,” the opposite “Zionism is fascism.” The indicators stayed up for greater than a month till the college held an occasion referred to as “Open Studios,” the place the general public was invited to view college students’ artwork initiatives and studio areas. Through the occasion, campus police acquired an nameless criticism in regards to the indicators, and two officers arrived to order Patten to take them down.
In response to a authorized letter despatched to Brooklyn Faculty by the Basis for Particular person Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Modification nonprofit, the police claimed that the indicators violated faculty coverage towards affixing any indicators or posters to doorways. Whereas that rule alone is a suitable “time, place, and manner” restriction on scholar speech, the college’s apparent viewpoint discrimination is inflicting constitutional issues.
Whereas Patten was compelled to take down her indicators, quite a few different doorways in the identical constructing had been coated with postings—together with stickers, posters, flyers, and even top-to-bottom wrapping paper. Many of those decorations additionally included explicitly political content material, similar to a poster detailing “How To Be An Ally To Indigenous Peoples” and a sticker from the Human Rights Marketing campaign, an LGBT advocacy group. However solely Patten’s posters had been focused.
Making issues worse, on November 29, a professor knowledgeable Patten that the criticism towards her had been despatched to the college’s authorized division. The faculty’s artwork division chair, Mona Hadler, later instructed Patten that she acknowledged Patten’s “right to free speech, but Hadler also said campus police have the authority to remove posters from doors.” In response to FIRE’s letter, Hadler “did not explain why others’ door signs and artwork were able to remain up while Patten’s signs had to come down.”
On November 30, Patten was knowledgeable by the college’s authorized division that her indicators violated Brooklyn Faculty’s posting coverage, which prohibits hanging “any postings on college walls, entrances, grounds, etc.” The division additionally failed to clarify why others’ postings had been allowed to remain up.
As a public college, Brooklyn Faculty is sure to abide by First Modification requirements in its guidelines for college students and school. Whereas “Brooklyn College’s policy prohibiting posters on doors appears to comply with this principle on its face,” FIRE’s letter reads, the coverage “runs afoul of the First Amendment when selectively enforced based on the content and message of the poster, as amply illustrated by Brooklyn College’s demand that Patten remove her signs, apparently for no reason other than their message.”
When a college chooses to selectively implement in any other case legally sound time, place, and method restrictions to restrict some political beliefs however permit others to go unimpeded, it has violated the First Modification. Even when speech is controversial, public schools cannot choose and select what expression is topic to high school insurance policies.