Keeping Every Member of Our Community Safe

Dear Members of the Drexel Community,

Our new Drexel Dragons will begin moving onto campus at the end of the week, and we are so excited to welcome our amazing new students and their families to campus. Move-in Weekend, followed by Welcome Week, marks the beginning of what we hope will be a transformational educational experience that will prepare our students to have the best possible future.

There is no better environment for these young adults to begin their apprenticeship as creative problem solvers, responsible leaders, and exemplary citizens than an inclusive University like ours. We prize free speech and inquiry, intellectual diversity, and robust debate conducted with mutual respect, all of which fuel the advancement of knowledge and enlarge our understanding of the world. We also recognize the crucial role that dissent and peaceful protest can play in provoking intellectual ferment, challenging the status quo, and calling the public’s attention to injustices, humanitarian crises, and other pressing issues.

At the same time, we have a moral and legal obligation to keep every member of our community safe and secure by giving no quarter to discrimination, intimidation, hate, or any activity that disrupts University operations, contributes to a hostile environment, or hinders the pursuit of our teaching, research, and civic missions.

This past academic year, many college and university campuses, including Drexel's, were besieged by unregistered, illegal encampments and other form of speech and conduct that crossed the line between peaceful protests and unlawful harassment, discrimination and destruction of property.

As a new academic year has begun at most colleges and universities, many have already experienced disruptive protests against the war in Gaza that have featured hateful, discriminatory conduct, trespassing, and destruction of property.

We cannot and will not allow that to happen at Drexel. Now, with protests being planned in Philadelphia throughout the month, starting with a demonstration against tomorrow’s presidential debate, we must take prudent measures to defend free speech, to minimize disruptions to everyday life on campus, such as prohibited encampments, and to protect our community from discrimination, harassment, or physical harm.

The first measure is visible for all to see. Over the weekend Drexel Public Safety erected fencing around Korman Quad. We took this painful step to discourage trespassing and to prevent outside activists or protesters from setting up prohibited encampments at the heart of campus. While Drexel students, faculty, and professional staff with IDs are still welcome to enjoy the use of these spaces, we plan on keeping the fencing in place as long as the credible threat of an illegal encampment or occupation of our campus remains.

The second measure has been to establish clear, comprehensive, enforceable rules and guidelines for managing campus protests, demonstrations and other forms of activism. These rules and guidelines go into effect today. Developed with the expert guidance from external review counsel at Cozen O’Connor, these rules and guidelines affirm our values and delineate expectations in support of the rights of our community to free expression and rigorous debate. Affirming essential rules codified in the Code of Conduct, these guidelines apply to every one of us – faculty, students, and professional staff. They also are designed to promote inclusion, civility, mutual respect and belonging, and fulfill our moral and legal obligations to keep our community safe, secure, and free from discrimination, harassment, and all forms of harm. 

We encourage you to read the activism guidelines in their entirety at this link, we want to call attention to some important parts.

First, these guidelines do not limit free speech or peaceful protest and assembly. Rather, they spell out reasonable time, place, and manner guidelines that affirm your right to express your views freely and participate in peaceful, lawful, registered campus teach-ins, rallies, and protests.

However, these guidelines reaffirm the University’s ban on encampments. They prohibit vandalism and the destruction of property; impeding anyone’s access to and from University buildings, facilities, and shared spaces; all forms of discrimination, harassment, and intimidation (in person or online); the exercise of the “heckler’s veto” to prevent classroom instructors or invited guests to speak; staging unregistered or unauthorized campus demonstrations; continuing an outdoor demonstration past 10 p.m.; and any conduct that contributes to a hostile campus environment.

Second, the University will enforce these rules and guidelines consistently and fairly to ensure everyone’s safety, including those engaging in peaceful, registered campus demonstrations.

Third, we spell out the distinctions between protected speech, which encompasses the expression of views and opinions that any of us could consider fiercely debatable and highly objectionable, and unprotected speech, which includes threats, calls for violence, and verbal, physical, written, electronic, or other conduct that constitutes severe, persistent, or pervasive harassment based on an individual’s legally protected status or characteristic.

Fourth, while immediately enforceable, these rules and guidelines will be regularly examined. We can always be better and do better. We will continue to seek ways to improve our guidelines through ongoing assessment of their fairness and effectiveness and through engagement with members of our community.

Finally, these activism guidelines adhere to our guiding values and principles as an inclusive teaching and research institution that is maximally committed to the pursuit of knowledge, the education of our students, and the betterment of society.

We encourage you to read and reflect on these guidelines and work together to make this great University a better version of itself. The full Activism Guidelines can be found here.

Sincerely,

John Fry
President

Helen Y. Bowman
Executive Vice President, Treasurer and Chief Operating Officer

Paul E. Jensen
Executive Vice President and Nina Henderson Provost

Subir Sahu
Senior Vice President for Student Success

Mel Singleton
Vice President/Chief of Police, Department of Public Safety