MSU4Palestine held a placard demonstration on the brick patio area across the student center on Oct. 29, holding up signs that contained the pictures and names of Palestinian and Jewish children killed amid the humanitarian crisis and conflict in Gaza. This demonstration was the first one held on campus since Montclair State University updated its Expressive Activity Policy on Oct. 18.
Each placard that was displayed had the words “We mourn,” in English, Arabic and Hebrew for Palestinian and Jewish children. There were about eight student protesters and Professor Adam Rzepka, who works in the English department at Montclair State in attendance for the demonstration.
This demonstration was organized by students Maria Serra and Yitzi Halberstam and Professor Rzepka. Organizing protests is one of the major updates in the new expressive policy, with organizers having to alert the university five days in advance.
Rzepka stated his thoughts on how the updated expressive policy had so far affected the placard demonstration.
“This is the first time we haven’t been shut down so far,” Rzepka said. “And I suspect that it’s because [Montclair State] wants to allow its new policy to take hold. You’ll notice that there are still, as there always have been, more police than protesters for a silent protest of like five people. A pretty big police presence, there’s barricades set up.”
The entire process of organizing the protests is one of the main critiques of this policy. Maria Serra, who is a senior communications studies major, explains the process of getting protests organized.
“You have to fill out the intent of the protest, what group is doing it, how many people you think are going to show up, what you’re going to do, like you basically have to tell them everything. If too many people show up, or if we end up chanting when we don’t get permission to chant, they could get us in trouble for that,” said Serra.
According to Serra, MSU4Palestine tried to put in two events for their organization and they were both denied due to the limitations on where they were allowed to protest and as well as the time conflicts with other events.
In recent months before the updated expressive policy, organizations such as MSU4Palestine and FJP (Faculty for Justice in Palestine) held protests outside the student center, leading to clashes with university administrators over where the protesters were allowed to hold their demonstrations. The aftermath of these events led to the expressive policy update.
Montclair State’s decision to change the expressive policy led to backlash from Montclair State University students and faculty. The intense reactions from the students and faculty led to an emailed statement from President Jonathan Koppell, apologizing for the unclear nature and errors made in the new policy. The new policy has been revised to fix some of the cloudiness.
Despite this email coming out from Koppell, there are still protesters who are a part of MSU4Palestine who believe the new policy infringes their First Amendment rights, due to the new policy adding more restrictions on when, where and how they can conduct their demonstrations and protests.
“Now before we even do a protest we have to let them know five days in advance, getting it approved. Now, they’re just limiting our speech. It’s a public campus too so I don’t get why trying to limit our voices,” said Janeen Khalil, sophomore public health major and one of the MSU4Palestine protesters. “As people of this country, everyone has a side, everyone wants to share their opinion, expressions of certain things. Especially [because] some of us are [from] certain places, or relate to a certain situation that happened.”
