Less than five hours before Gov. Rick Perry spoke at Katzen on Friday, March 23, around two dozen AU students received an email from Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution Services. The email said these students were suspected of violating the student conduct code for their involvement in the Jan Brewer protests and alerted them to schedule a hearing. The specific charges included “intentionally or recklessly interfering with normal university or university sponsored activities” and “disorderly conduct or interfering with the rights of others.”
We recognize the concern from the administration’s point of view. The Jan Brewer protests shocked many, and as a result some action was expected from those in charge.
But the surrounding context and threatening tone of the emails seriously suggest that AU used them as a source of image control rather than enforcement of the Student Conduct Code.
The Eagle is disturbed by this possibility. Actions like this erode AU’s well-earned reputation as an institution that encourages active discourse, in all its forms.
In the month between Jan Brewer’s and Rick Perry’s on-campus appearances, no conduct emails were sent out to students. And during the Brewer event itself, Public Safety made no attempt to detain, lecture or discipline any protesters. Only on the day of the Perry event, after a month of constructive campus-wide dialogue on appropriate methods of protests, were protesters notified of any possible violations. And as noted above, the wording and timing of the email seemed specifically targeted at preventing further disruptions.
Indeed, when the timing of these emails is considered, they appear to be strong hint from the administration: Should these same students be identified inciting disruptive chants and rounds of “mic-checking” while Perry was speaking later in the day, more significant charges would follow.
Sending ominous emails to students as a method of crowd control does more harm than good for our campus’s political activism in the long run. If a college campus is not a healthy environment for a protest, what is?
Regardless of the administration’s motivations, some may still look at the civil nature of the Rick Perry protest and conclude that the ends justified the administration’s means. They contend that because AU sent an email threatening disciplinary repercussions, students chose not to repeat the Brewer fiasco.
But this is a classic “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” (Latin for “after this, therefore because of this”) logical fallacy. The Eagle’s reporters have found little evidence to suggest the protesters were planning a Brewer-type interruption at Perry’s speech. There was significant reason to believe AU students were going to protest appropriately through their own volition. Oh, they were still going to give Rick Perry an earful. But not so much as a Brewer repeat.
Yet, by sending this email, the administration has shown it has little faith in its students. That it doesn’t believe its students can learn on their own. That only through threats of strong-handed discipline can AU control its desired image.
Is this to become a regular occurrence? If AU students attend an event to voice their opposition to a speaker’s political positions, can they expect to be identified by the administration through CCTV footage and event photographs, and then be promptly told to cease and desist?
Should AU continue to act in this manner, the University — in a Rick Perry-like manner — will be sentencing campus political discourse to death.
