The Tartan

On Sunday, March 23, about ten students gathered at the Fence at a “candlelight vigil” organized by Academic Workers United, a proposed union of Carnegie Mellon academic workers. 

The protesters distributed a flyer explaining their position that “The CMU Expressive Activity Registration Policy is an attack on your free speech.” They outlined the requirements for events on Carnegie Mellon proerty under the policy, as well as their grievances with the policy. 

They encouraged attendees to submit comment forms to University administration regarding the 3 freedom of expression policies are under the 30-day Comment Period.

The protesters gathered in a circle near the fence and held small plastic candles. They discussed not only the free speech policy but also the recent letter from the Select Committee on the CCP to President Farnam Jahanian. 

The students deliberated courses of action to block the Committee’s requests for information about Chinese nationals and other foreign nationals at Carnegie Mellon, as well as connections between Carnegie Mellon faculty and Chinese institutions.

Following the vigil, The Tartan spoke with several organizers about their motivations and concerns surrounding the university’s expressive activity policy.

“There are lots of reasons to oppose the expressive activity policy,” said Jimmy Lizama, a graduate student in the English department. “But primary among them for me as an instructor is that it violates both academic freedom and free speech. How do we expect our students to practice free academic speech if they have to register it with all the risks that registration involves?”

Ph.D. student Jessica Vinskus, from the Chemistry department, explained the choice to hold a vigil rather than a more traditional protest. 

“We wanted to change it up a bit,” she said. “A vigil can feel more approachable, people might be hesitant to join a protest because they don’t know the chants or haven’t made a poster. A vigil invites people to simply bring their experiences.”

Vinskus described the group as a coalition of students and campus workers and emphasized that the policy poses barriers to protest and organizing. 

Vinskus also expressed how students and community members see Carnegie Mellon’s new policy surrounding free speech as harmful.  

“We see that as a way to stifle free speech. There’s a lot of barriers that it’s creating that are inherently intimidating and also not feasible with the dynamic nature of organizing protests and demonstrations,” Vinskus said. “The term ‘expressive activity’ is vague and open to interpretation, which makes it easy to apply inconsistently.”

That flexibility in interpretation, Vinskus explained, allows the university to pick and choose which events fall under the policy, and which do not. 

In the case of the vigil, Vinskus said, the administration chose not to apply the expressive activity label, even though the group planned to go through related procedures to register the vigil as an expressive activity.

“This is something that, to me looking at that policy, it does feel like it matches that,” Vinskus said. “It shows that they’re willing to be lenient when they want something.”