The University of Florida has warned its students that indoor protests inside campus buildings will be forbidden on Nov. 1, the day the school’s Board of Trustees consider Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) to be the school’s new president.
The school‘s banning of indoor protests comes from a regulation that has existed at the university for at least two decades, which bans demonstrations inside university buildings. Indoor protests have not been banned with this regulation for some time, as most protests held inside school buildings have been peaceful, according to a letter from UF’s President Kent Fuchs.
“UF supports the First Amendment right to free speech and embraces our university as a place where people are able and encouraged to exchange differing viewpoints or express their feelings through peaceful protest,” the letter read. “As our core value of freedom and civility states, ‘We are a community that affirms and embraces openness to an inclusive range of viewpoints.’ With this commitment comes an obligation to protect the rights of everyone in our community to speak and to hear.”
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The president’s letter notes that a group of protesters inside a hall at the school had loudly protested on Oct. 10 while Sasse held a Q&A forum with students, banging their fists on windows, the walls, and furniture to drown out Sasse’s responses to the questions. Due to the protesters, a staff forum with Sasse that had been planned inside the building had to be held virtually online.
Fuchs wrote in his letter that the school values free speech and that the school’s core value of freedom and civility states that “an open-minded culture is the foundation of freedom of expression and affirms our commitment to academic freedom, which is rooted in mutual respect of others.” The president hoped that students would learn to respect the right of others to speak freely, the letter read.
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It was confirmed in early October that Sasse, 50, was in discussions with UF to become its next president. A staunch conservative, the senator was a major critic of former President Donald Trump, and after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, he was one of seven GOP members of the Senate who voted in favor of conviction in Trump’s impeachment trial.
