In his email welcoming the Hamilton community to the 2024–25 academic year, new College President Steven Tepper expressed his hopes for cultivating the “Hamilton way” in campus culture. He also included links to Hamilton’s new “Rules of Conduct” for Demonstrations and Protests. In response to these rule changes, the Levitt Center hosted one of its Community Conversation Lunches to allow students to engage in discourse on the role and limits of campus protests.
Bennett Hauck ʼ26 led one of the small group discussions on the role and limits of
campus protests. Hauck framed the conversation by noting that campus protests are in some form inevitable. Posing the overarching question as what the role of protests at Hamilton were, he asked students to keep this in mind while participating in the dialogue.
The discussion began with asking students to explain why they think protests are important on campus, and many attendees expressed that college, and especially a small and well-connected campus like Hamilton, is such an important place and time to learn how to exercise your voice and learn how to use your right to protest.
When asked how they felt about Hamilton’s new protest rules, most students agreed that no rule was particularly severe, but that the general vagueness used in the language of the rules could potentially lend Hamilton’s administration the ultimate power in deciding when and how students protest. Other students brought up concerns with the rule that requires a 48 hour notice when booking rooms on 25Live, which they felt could contradict the often spontaneous or sudden need for a protest and thus the energy associated with fast-paced movements.
Hauck then asked attendees if the rules, labeled “Rules of Conduct for Demonstrations and Protests,” should differentiate between protests and demonstrations. When the group struggled to make distinctions between the two terms, they concluded that setting distinct standards would also be difficult, so it made sense that the College grouped protests and demonstrations together.
As the lunch hour neared to a close, students were again asked how they thought the College should balance students’ interest in belonging and feeling safe in the student body with the right to protest and discuss challenging opinions. Students agreed that with the College’s hopes to organize and be aware of protests through students booking demonstrations on 25Live, this practice might not actually alert students to protests occurring on campus because most students do not actually check 25Live.
Segueing off of this consensus, Hauck asked the group if they thought that a designated free-speech zone for protests would help students feel safer. While answers varied, several students agreed that the general intent for protests is to disrupt schedules to garner peoples’ attention to the protest’s subject and that a designated zone would be able to be avoided and thus contradict this intent.
Hauck ended the discussion with a final question, asking students if Hamilton should notify students more explicitly and clearly about the change in rules. Students remarked that with Tepper announcing the rule change hyperlinked in his email, many students likely missed the announcement due to how crowded Hamilton students’ inboxes usually are.
Others emphasized this point, highlighting that with the email’s focus on welcoming students back for the academic year, students were not necessarily looking for announcements of policy changes while reading. Ethan McKellop ʼ25 shared that “The introduction email and listed policies feel at odds with each other.”
The Levitt Center aims to combine academic knowledge with practical skills to allow students to take part in dialogue surrounding public affairs. Community Conversation Lunches are a space for students to engage with current events with the assistance of trained student facilitators.
