Letter to the Editor: Regulations and Autonomy are Not Mutually Exclusive

In last week’s Quest, in an open letter written by the current Quest editors regarding student autonomy, Queditor Louis Chase wrote, “Student Life is now ‘interested in establishing standards and regulations for student posters and flyers,’ which can only be interpreted as an effort to further restrict student political speech.” In response to this, I ask, why does “establishing standards and regulations” have to be only about restricting political speech? 

First of all, regulations aren’t inherently bad. The Queditors’ letters come dangerously close to arguing that any so-called censorship of student expression is an injustice. But hopefully, we can all agree that there are circumstances where restricting speech would be justified. For instance, if someone draws swastikas on campus, that graffiti obviously ought to be removed immediately, as it was last week.

The question, then, is where to draw the line between respecting free speech and removing harmful language. For example, people notoriously disagree about what language qualifies as inciting violence as opposed to advocating for peaceful protest. The administration is already drawing that line somewhere. They have already been taking down flyers, as the Queditors observed, so there are clearly already some sort of internal guidelines. Having clear regulations will only increase consistency and leave it less open to subjective judgment; it won’t necessarily increase the amount of flyers being taken down. 

Furthermore, poster regulations don’t have to be about restricting political speech. While the Queditors are rightfully concerned about a trend in challenges to student autonomy, there is also a concerning trend of posters that Community Safety said “encouraged vandalism and property damage” and “caused concern for our security,” according to the October 4 Senate Beat. 

I personally saw the poster that I believe this was referring to: It called for an international day of action in response to Israel’s actions in Lebanon and read “smash, snip, burn, paint.” It made me feel actively unsafe: smash what? burn what? Who, exactly, would they be targeting? At the time, I didn’t know whether the poster had been taken down by CSOs or an opinionated student. I didn’t know if this kind of language was normal at Reed or if people were generally opposed to it. If it had been clear that this poster was in violation of Reed’s guidelines and that CSOs were responsible for removing it, I would have felt safer and more supported.

Regardless of whether these potential regulations are in response to posters advocating violence or simply “Audrey and Karnell despise this piece of paper,” I’m not opposed. I would rather have an established, publicly available set of “standards and regulations” for posters than have admin continue to make private decisions on a case-by-case basis. I want to be clear: I don’t support an approval process where posters must be rubber-stamped before they can be put up. What I do support, though, is increased transparency about what would justify taking down posters, as they are already doing. Is this likely? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a naive freshman. But I hope so.

I hope that the Reed administration deserves my faith in them. I hope that these potential regulations are established based on discussion with students and community members; that they are reasonable; that they are interpreted fairly and consistently; and that they are made publicly available. I hope that I am justified in believing that we don’t always have to jump to assuming the worst.