KINGSTON - Students at the University of Rhode Island kicked off a week of resistance to new student conduct regulations with a protest Monday in front of Green Hall, which houses the university's central administration.
About 150 students attended the rally at its peak, estimated URI Vice President for Student Affairs Tom Dougan. The protest began at noon, and by 12:30 p.m. the crowd stood at about 100 students. But by 1:30 p.m. it had dwindled to about 30 as students returned to classes. The protest had been scheduled to continue until 3 p.m.
Directing their chants of "We pay you rent, don't search without consent" and "This is an institution that ignores the Constitution" at URI President Robert Carothers' office, students protested changes to the student disciplinary code made by the Faculty Senate and signed by the president.
There were several controversial changes made to the student code, according to Frances Cohen, URI's dean of students. The first allows the university to punish students for off-campus offenses representing a "general threat to safety and not just a threat to the university community," as well as for repeated off-campus arrests. This change is largely in response to complaints about off-campus parties.
The changes also represent the university's reaction to an evolving "legal climate," which now places more responsibility for student misconduct on institutions, Cohen said.
"It used to be the more responsibility you took on, the more liability you took on," Cohen said. "In the last 10 years that has shifted, and now the courts will take steps to punish institutions that do not take steps to prevent foreseeable harm. Now if there are repeated arrests ... there's an opportunity for the university to try to prevent more costly mistakes" by disciplining the student, she added.
The second change allows university officials to conduct "administrative searches" of dorm rooms without students' consent, a right that was previously reserved for campus police. The third allows students to face disciplinary hearings on the same charges more than once if new evidence is provided within one week of the original hearing.
Though these changes have clearly raised concerns among students, "a lot of the protest on campus assumes that these policies will be abused in some way," Cohen said. But "none of these policies are implemented unless there is a complaint," she said. "We're not going to go looking for trouble. We don't have the staff to do that, and that's not our job as educators."
Carothers issued a statement Monday defending changes to the code, writing, "The higher education landscape has changed, and there's a rational and reasonable case to be made for these new policies."
But students at the protest were unconvinced, saying the changes threaten their freedom from unjustified searches and double jeopardy and open the possibility of harsher or broader interpretation of the handbook's new language at some later date.
"I think it's pretty ridiculous that they're trying to enforce these ridiculous new laws," said Kelly Long, a sophomore. "They're trying to take away our civil rights guaranteed to us by the United States Constitution."
Erin Philbick, a sophomore and president of URI's chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, offered similar criticism.
"This is not acceptable. We deserve the right to respect," Philbick said. SSDP is part of the Student Rights Coalition, which is made up of groups opposed to the changes.
URI has an advisory committee in order to help craft student disciplinary policy, but its suggestions were overruled, Philbick said. The committee was created in response to protests from six students, called the "RoJo Six," who were arrested in 2003 for demonstrating against a closed disciplinary meeting at the Roger Williams Dining Hall. In order to give students a voice in deciding conduct policy, URI then created the Student Rights and Responsibility Committee, which included five students, four faculty and three staff.
But, Philbick said, the SRRC's proposals for changes to the disciplinary code were ignored and the administration's changes were passed over their objections.
Cohen denied that the students were shut out of the SRRC's most recent decisions and said that they were simply overruled in the committee's voting.
"The student protesters have indicated that they did not have a voice in these policies, that they were not deliberated with enough time, that there were procedural errors and deliberate mistakes made to push them through. There is no truth to that," Cohen said.
"I guess they decided the democratic process produced a result they did not like and they were going to fight it," she added.
Students, however, insisted their actions are justified.
"This is democracy," Philbick said, saying students were standing up for the law, particularly working to ensure that campus police officers, rather than untrained university officials or residential assistants, conduct searches.
"This is our chance to create peaceful change," Philbick said.
According to the URI press release, the new regulations are now in effect but will not be enforced until the beginning of 2006. Dougan said the regulations will undergo annual review.
Cohen said misinformation about the new policies is driving the protests, but the university will seek to correct students' impressions of the new regulations.
"I hope in the course of the information campaign we conduct over the next few weeks students will be reassured that the world they know is not changing," she said.
But Micah Daigle, a URI senior who spoke to the crowd through a megaphone throughout the protest, leading chants and attacking the new policies, was steadfast in his opposition.
"I think this (protest) is exactly what we hoped for," Daigle said. "I really hope President Carothers will pay more attention to students rather than whoever convinced him to do this. If he doesn't, we'll be back."
Ben Wright, a student senator and URI junior, called the protest a success, though he conceded that "it's hard to hold a protest because so many people need to get to class."
Student protesters have secured a meeting on Tuesday morning with Carothers and will hold a meeting on the main quad Tuesday evening. Thursday will see another protest, timed to coincide with the Faculty Senate meeting from 3 to 5 p.m.
Though Dougan said he disagrees with the protesters' goals, he offered praise for students' level of engagement.
"I think they are legitimate concerns," and it is exciting to see students exercising their right to free expression, Dougan said. "We just disagree on these few items."
