RPI protesters face disciplinary action
Participants face possible expulsion for supporting student-run union
TROY, N.Y. >> A month after several hundred students, alumni, faculty and staff at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute protested the college administration’s plan to take control of the traditionally student-run Rensselaer Union, many of those protesters now find themselves facing disciplinary action.
Representatives from Save the Union, the student group that has been battling college President Shirley Ann Jackson for nearly two years over what group members say is her effort to wrest control of the 127-year-old Rensselaer Union out of student hands for the first time in its history, say students involved in the Oct. 13 protest began receiving emails from college administrators last week saying they had been among those identified as taking part in the protest. Those students were either advised that they faced formal disciplinary charges or asked to attend an informal meeting with college officials to discuss their “experience” at the demonstration outside a black-tie event hosted by Jackson for alumni to kick off RPI’s latest capital fundraising campaign.
“This latest move by the Jackson administration is just another in a series of maneuvers aimed at trampling students’ rights and censoring the student voice by wielding fear as an effective weapon,” the group said in a statement.
Among those contacted by college administrators was Dan Seel, one of the two students who applied unsuccessfully for permission to hold the group’s first protest against Jackson in March 2016. As in the case of the recent protest, the college denied permission for the demonstration, but students were still able to gather because Bill Puka, a tenured faculty member in the college’s Cognitive Science Department whose areas of teaching and research include moral-political philosophy and democracy and anarchism, agreed to host a “lab class” at the same time and place as the planned protests.
While Seel said he was not involved in organizing the most recent protest, he remains a member and supporter of Save the Union and took part in last month’s demonstration.
“I came to protest the changes to the director of the union position, of course,” he said by email, “but this protest seemed to be much more important than just that issue. It was to show the administration of RPI that we were not going to abide their attempts to suppress our voices.”
Those attempts, in this case, included college officials encircling the entire plaza leading down from the main campus to the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Music and Performing Arts Center and the Richard G. Folsom Library. College officials claimed the move was simply a safety precaution, but protest organizers said it was done to keep protesters out of view of partygoers.
After protesting from behind those barricades for about 20 minutes, though, the group broke through the fence and moved out onto the lawn, where they continued to protest peacefully for about two hours.
College spokeswoman Richie Hunter said in an email that while she could not discuss individual cases because of student privacy concerns, RPI was well within its rights to discipline those who participated in the “unauthorized demonstration.”
“It is our duty to address such violations,” Hunter wrote, “and to determine the extent to which there may have been violations of Institute policies and standards. One of our goals in doing this is to educate our students, using every interaction as a growth and learning opportunity; and to respond with any appropriate consequences for the type and magnitude of the infraction. There are times that we accomplish these goals with simple non-judicial meetings and dialogue, and there are times when the conduct is serious enough that it is managed by the Rensselaer judicial process.”
Michael Gardner, a graduate student and Save the Union supporter, said he was accused of violating three of those policies simply by participating in the demonstration, which even campus officials and local police admitted was peaceful. The violations alleged against demonstrators include trespassing, violation of a published RPI or student government policy or regulation and failure to comply.
“We were never told to return behind the barriers, nor that we were violating campus policies,” he recalled. [T]here was not any behavior by demonstrators that could be thought of as overly disruptive or unruly.”
When students broke through the barrier, no efforts were observed of university officials or public safety officers attempting to stop them. Instead, according to the complaint against Gardner, college and city officers made video recordings of the protest which RPI officials used to identify participants.
According to the college website, those convicted of disciplinary charges face punishment ranging from a disciplinary warning or probation to expulsion and fines. Save the Union itself is not a campus-recognized organization, though, so it is not subject to similarly permitted disciplinary action.
While some participants were notified by the college of specific charges, others, including Seel, were simply informed that the Dean of Students Office “would like to meet with you to discuss your experience at the demonstration,” according to a copy of one email provided to The Record. “This is not a judicial matter, but it is important that you and [a college official] meet to have an educational conversation.”
Seel said he refused such a meeting with William Sitterly, an associated dean in the Officed of Student L>iving and Learning.
“I neither trust your intentions nor will I offer any information that can be used to harm any other student,” Seel said in his response, a copy of which he provided to The Record. “This is quite clearly the beginning of a campaign to suppress student rights. This kind of middle management authoritarianism is reprehensible, and I will not be meeting with any official to discuss any act of free expression.”
Save the Union said the administration employed similar tactics a few weeks ago with students accused of distributing Save the Union information on campus.
“Insisting that they were in no trouble, the administration interrogated them without the proper safeguards guaranteed by the Student Handbook — such as informing the students of their rights and the charges levied against them,” the group said in its statement. “When eventually forced to proceed in accordance with the handbook and cite actual policy violations, they chose to cite a policy prohibiting operating businesses on campus.
“Ultimately, the administration was unable to prove their ridiculous claims and were therefore unsuccessful in squashing that particular instance of free speech.”
In an email to students, Grand Marshal Justin Etzine, the leader of student government, and Matthew Rand, president of the union, said they had formally protested to Assistant Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students Travis Apgar and that Apgar’s response was to flatly deny the allegations — even in the face of student documentation — and warn them against sharing what he called “incorrect” facts with the student body.
In the letter, the two student leaders even questioned if college officials intentionally enticed the students to move beyond the fencing.
“As attendees of the Capital Campaign Launch event, we had the opportunity to see first-hand that the students participating in the demonstration were some of the most respectful demonstrators we have ever observed. They appeared calm, and their behavior on a whole was commendable. At one point during the protest, demonstrators even paused their speeches to join Former Vice President for Student Life Eddie Ade Knowles and his students in song at Dr. Knowles’ invitation. We have nothing but admiration for the students who had the courage to respectfully support and believe in the future of our Union, something we all care so deeply about, and we know that law enforcement and Public Safety officers present also commended students for the excellent behavior and unparalleled respect they exhibited throughout the demonstration.
Officials were also quoted as inviting the student protesters to pass the fenced-off area and proceed closer to the event area. As the administration never instructed the should stop, the students present were in full compliance with Rensselaer policies, notably the [student] handbook and the instructions they were given.”
The fight over the future of the student union began when RPI administrators abruptly fired the student-hired union director, Joe Cassidy, in December 2015, setting in motion what Save the Union and its supporters believe is a plan to take control of the lucrative facility. Save the Union claims that move, followed by what it sees as several subsequent attempts to fill the position with a college appointee, is aimed at helping Jackson to attain complete control over all aspects of the college, as well as to dip into the union’s revenue, which comes from student services such as a bookstore, meeting rooms and other spaces for clubs and other organizations to meet, as well as entertainment, performing arts and fitness facilities.
The college’s finances have been in question in recent years, with Standard & Poor’s, a leading credit rating agency, lowering RPI’s long-term bond rating at the beginning of 2017 from A- to BBB+, citing the college’s high debt burden and low available resources. BBB is the lowest score for which a bond would be considered investment-grade, according to S&P.
The administration’s actions have also caught the eye of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a Philadelphiabased nonprofit group dedicated to defending civil liberties on campus. That group called on the college to reverse a campuswide ban on demonstrations during RPI’s annual Reunion & Homecoming weekend that was cited in denying permission for the latest protest.
The foundation specifically monitors how colleges from coast to coast adhere to constitutional guarantees of free speech, offering individual ratings of colleges on its website, www.thefire.org. RPI was given the group’s worst rating, proclaimed a “red light institution” because it has currently in effect “at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.”