Protest and Demonstration Rights and Guidelines
Centre College is a community of learners that dedicates itself to creating a world with a robust and inclusive space for dialogue, including on our campus. Centre’s mission is to prepare students for lives of learning, leadership, and service, enabling our graduates to contribute to their communities and address the world’s most challenging problems. This mission requires a learning environment where all community members practice engaging across difference, and critical thinking to expand their understanding of the range of attitudes, values, ideas, actions, issues, policies, and practices that exist on campus and in the world beyond.
Peaceful protest and demonstration are important forms of activism
Centre recognizes the historical importance of nonviolent public demonstration and protest. Activism enables community members to publicly display their concerns, their values and their aspirations. Centre supports the expression of one's own ideas and the response to others' ideas. We affirm the right to assemble peacefully to evince dissent and to call on others to take action.
Community members can engage in non-disruptive protest and demonstration
All members of the campus community can engage in personal activity involving protest and demonstration.
Places for Campus Protest and Demonstration
Members of the Centre campus also have the opportunity to publicize events on campus, as provided in the Student Handbook (employees would utilize these processes, as well). Some of these opportunities are limited to registered student organizations or campus departments, including:
• Posting announcements and flyers on campus bulletin boards
• Displaying Cowan banners
• Using table displays in Cowan
• Including announcements in the College’s weekly email
• Posting to the College’s Events Calendar
• Using the College electronic display boards in the Campus Center
Other forms of campus display, such as sidewalk chalk and banners other than in the main dining room, must be pre-approved by the Student Life Office. Where signs, banners, posters, chalking, and the like are used outside the guidelines or without prior approval, they may be removed, and the individuals or groups doing so may lose their opportunities to utilize these methods as a result. Campus organizations and campus departments may reserve space on campus for meetings and events, in accordance with the normal reservation processes and approvals applicable to those spaces. Individuals and organizations outside Centre College are not normally allowed to use or reserve College spaces, unless they have been granted permission by the appropriate office.
Conduct Standards
Speech that incites or threatens physical violence, speech that is defamatory, and forms of expression that violate our Policy Prohibiting Discrimination and Harassment, are prohibited and subject to discipline and sanction in accordance with the appropriate Handbook procedures.
Centre does not permit actions that prevent the speech of others, block the passage of persons or vehicles, cause property damage, threaten campus or personal safety, harass, threaten or act abusively toward an instructor, staff member, students, or guests of the College, or result in physical harm to individuals. Such actions will be subject to discipline and sanction in accordance with the appropriate Handbook procedures and consistent with applicable law.
Centre does not permit action that substantially impedes the delivery of College services or operations, the delivery of educational content, or that otherwise disrupts the learning process. Individuals engaged in such disruptive behaviors may be subject to disciplinary sanctions, including a warning, the dispersal of the group or activity or more serious disciplinary consequences for participants.
Centre employees and students may not claim or appear to represent the views of the institution nor make significant use of Centre resources to support their personal expression. Centre employees and students may not hang signs, banners, or flags on the outside of College buildings (including in windows, on doors, and other outward facing parts of a buildings) to engage in personal expression.