University presidents are taking a stricter approach to the rules for students, hoping to tamp down protests and return campus life to normalcy, the Wall Street Journal reports. The University of Denver is banning protest tents. Indiana University wants people to stop writing on the walls or holding late-night rallies. At Harvard, students and others will need advance approval to use bullhorns or sidewalk chalk. Administrators hope such moves will head off another semester of explosive demonstrations that spread across campuses last school year over the war in Gaza and ire over schools’ investments in companies with ties to Israel. Presidents are under pressure from alumni and trustees, with their jobs on the line. Five Ivy League campus leaders have quit or retired in the past year, most under criticism for their handling of demonstrations and allegations of campus antisemitism. Columbia president Minouche Shafik stepped down on Wednesday.
Administrators are aiming to keep tensions at a simmer, avoid police involvement and limit damage to their schools’ reputations. Activists have other plans. Some students who have spent the summer at internships, traveling to see family or working campus jobs have attended demonstrations. Some are logging on to virtual protest training, where they are told to write a lawyer’s number in permanent marker on their body. They are rallying peers to flood administrators with calls and emails about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and their colleges’ financial ties to weapons manufacturers. Some are planning to protest at next week’s Democratic National Convention. “Anyone who’s a president or a chancellor who doesn’t say they’re a little nervous is, I think, misguided,” said Jeremy Haefner, chancellor at the University of Denver. For the new school year, Denver is barring encampments. It is a shift from the spring, when the school let students camp out as a form of protest, with approval from the chancellor.
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