Spatial Claim and Power & Free Speech on Campus

While reading the article entitled, “Spatial Justice: A frame for reclaiming our rights to be, thrive, express and connect,” by Bailey, Lobenstine, and Nagel for a few class meetings ago, the current situation of free speech on Ohio University’s campus kept bringing itself to the front of my mind. I would argue that the arrests made in February of seventy students for a peaceful sit in illustrated the university’s tendency to limit student activists right to be and become in a space, known as spatial claim, in addition to the right to thrive and express, spatial power.

Baker Center, a public building labeled as the “student center” remained open until 10 PM, yet students were forcefully taken from a space they have a right to be in prior to the closing of the building. The disregard of the rights of students to be in Baker was absolutely tied to the message they were expressing. The students demanded that Ohio University become a sanctuary campus, meaning that the university would refuse to enforce immigration laws and would install policies intended to protect immigrant students. Becoming a sanctuary campus could threaten Ohio University’s funding from the government. Any action taken by students that threatens the university’s profits is immediately repressed. The university retracted students’ spatial claim and spatial power on February 1st.

However, the repression of the right to thrive and express, intimately tied to the concept of free speech, is not an isolated incident on Ohio University’s campus, and certainly not an isolated incident on campuses across the United States. The article entitled, “Who’s behind the free speech crisis on campus?” by Dorian Bon illustrates the tendency of universities to shut down student gatherings and individual political actions, then follow up with distributing academic and legal ramifications to those involved. While historically, leftist gatherings are repressed more frequently, the current crisis of limitations on free speech also extends to those with conservative messages. The article mentions a student at Hamline University who was suspended for writing a statement in support of open carry gun policy on campus.

Ohio University just put into effect a policy that details where students have “freedom of expression” on campus, banning public protest in any university building. While the title of the policy uses the word freedom, it enacts anything but. The university is effectively dictating where students’ constitutional right to free speech can be utilized. Students’ spatial claim to spaces and places within the university they call home as well as the power they have a right to possess in said spaces is being curtailed by the university in an authoritarian manner.

The question becomes, what can concerned students, faculty, staff and citizens of varying political beliefs do to challenge this gross injustice on Ohio University’s campus? According to Tyler Barton and Ryan Powers, Athens residents, in their article on the squashing of dissent on campus, “The fight for free speech at OU must therefore include as many people as possible in order to maximize our effectiveness. Since the policy aims to isolate progressive forces from potential supporters, defeating the policy will require principled unity on the basis of claiming, defending and expanding our right to free speech."

We must mobilize in mass and show the university and others interested in limiting expression that we will not stand for it. Students have the right to be, become, thrive and express on campus. We cannot be complacent in the face of such blatant disregard of student rights.

Here are the links to the articles I mentioned. I highly recommend them. :-)
https://socialistworker.org/2017/04/12/whos-behind-the-free-speech-crisis-on-campus
https://socialistworker.org/2017/09/19/we-wont-let-them-silence-us-at-ohio-university

"Chicago Seven" from www.history.com