Wellesley College’s first protest policy was presented to a small group of student leaders who were on campus to prepare for the upcoming semester on Aug. 27, 2018. This group included Ninan Pollack ‘20, who was the chair of Committee for Political and Legislative Awareness (CPLA), now known as Committee for Political Engagement (CPE), during the 2018-2019 school year.

Students invited to the presentation thought that the meeting was about Wellesley College switching shuttle bus contractors, from Peter Pan to Local Motion. Instead, after discussing transportation logistics, administrators unveiled plans for an interim policy on demonstration and free expression.

“I would say that everyone was kind of blindsided, because we thought this was going to be a meaning about transportation and the bus specifically, but it ended up being this big presentation of this new policy,” said Pollack.

According to a copy of the presentation obtained by the News, the interim protest policy included time, place, and manner restrictions, and required organizers to register any planned demonstrations with campus police. 

When Dean Sheilah Horton announced the policy to the wider campus community via email two days later, it was met with immediate backlash. Six students wrote an open letter in response within minutes, and a petition opposing the policy began to circulate.

On Sep. 4, less than one week after Dean Horton’s official statement, President Paula Johnson suspended the interim policy.

Following the suspension of the interim policy, Wellesley College worked with members of the community to design a permanent demonstration policy. Administrators received input from the Task Force on Speech and Inclusion, which included students and faculty, as well as an Ad-Hoc Committee convened by College Government, which consisted entirely of student representatives.

Pollack, who was a member of the Ad-Hoc Committee, says that the biggest impact of student feedback on the final policy was the diminished role of campus police. As they recall, there was a disconnect between administrators and student representatives regarding the role of campus police.

According to Pollack, “A few of us brought up the fact that they [campus police] contributed to a feeling of lack of safety on campus, one of the reasons being that they carried guns. And I remember Dean Horton not knowing that campus police carried guns.”

Despite progress on the involvement of campus police, concerns about a lack of community input persisted. The Task Force on Speech and Inclusion held two town hall meetings to discuss the policy during the fall of 2018, and members expressed concerns about the lack of attendance.

Professor of Peace and Justice Studies Catia Confortini told Sophie Hurwitz ‘21 in a Wellesley News article, “I think the Task Force is doing a great job, but the number of people who showed up was a little bit disappointing for me. It’s frustrating when people complain that ‘this policy was written without me,’ and then don’t participate in important conversations when they have the chance.”

Revisions to the protest policy continued for over a year. The final policy on demonstrations and free expression was released to students via email on Nov. 25, 2019.

The permanent policy includes time, place, and manner restrictions similar to the interim policy with the stated purpose of maintaining campus safety and minimizing disruption to students’ education. 

Organizers are required to register protests with administrators, not campus police, but officers still retain the ability “to respond to threats of violence and acts of violence without first contacting demonstration organizers or Wellesley College administrators.”  

Mikayla Tansil ‘25, the Community Organizing and Inclusion Liaison (COIL) for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years, has also attempted to ease the registration process by offering organizers the option to communicate plans for demonstrations through the COIL instead of going to administrators directly.

The protest policy was thrust into the spotlight in spring 2024 in the aftermath of the Hillary Rodham Clinton Center (HRCC) Summit. The summit, meant to promote democracy and celebrate the recently created HRCC, was met by opposition from pro-Palestinian protesters who argued that the HRCC was complicit in the ongoing tragedy in Gaza.

While the majority of protesters remained outside of Alumnae Hall as instructed by administrators under the authority of the protest policy, four students disrupted panels inside the event. 

The disruptors were removed and charged with “disorderly conduct and/or failure to comply with administration.” Instead of being resolved through an Honor Code Hearing, which involves students, faculty, and administrators, their cases were adjudicated via administrative resolution, which involved only administrators and the student being charged.

In an email statement to the News, Dean Horton explained the decision to use administrative resolution, writing, “The administrative resolution is typically used with cases that do not require fact finding because the facts are clear, and the incident requires a swift response. […] Last spring, the facts were clear – it was a high level security event and a disruption would be considered a violation and there was an undisputed disruption.”

Further protests ensued outside of each of the disruptors’ administrative resolution sessions.

Alex Teasley ‘27, was at the original protest outside of Alumnae Hall during the HRCC Summit, and attended the protests for the second, third, and fourth disruptors outside of their resolution sessions.

Teasley alleges that at the protest for the fourth disruptor, a former Associate Director for Residential Life threatened them with honor code charges for using a megaphone, including a specific threat to process the charge using administrative resolution.

When asked by the News if it was typical procedure to refer a student to administrative resolution at the time of an alleged incident, Dean Horton stated that she could not confirm whether Teasley’s story was accurate.

As her tenure as COIL comes to a close, Tansil said that there are still changes she would like to see made to the protest policy, but “things have been a little quiet, it’s sort of just been swept under the rug.”

For more in-depth interviews on the creation of the protest policy and its impact on the Wellesley community, listen to the latest episode of the Word on Wellesley (WoW!), the Wellesley News official podcast, on Spotify.

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Sazma Sarwar, Jessica Chen and Valida Pau.