Opinion: Free Speech is the Basis of Principled Neutrality

Deerfield Academy is proud of Head of School John Austin's A Framework for Schools. As I browsed through Deerfield’s Pulse news blog to research for this article, I found five posts about the Framework. . I also see it on the Academy's website’s homepage–hover over the Head of School tab, and the Framework is the only tab that will appear. H. I'm proud of it too, proud to be a student at one of the first preparatory schools in the nation to actively embrace the principles of neutrality to explore open communication and political exploration. Which is why I am ashamed of Student Handbook Rule 2.8.2.

Because I first and foremost want everyone to know exactly what this rule says and secondly do not want to be accused of taking any of the language out of context, I find it important to quote it here in full:

“Deerfield’s approach to on-campus advocacy, action, and protest is guided by the same priorities that guide our off-campus policy and also by our Conscientious Speech and Expression Policy. Venues like The Forum and Open Table seek to surface a diverse range of ideas and to respectfully test those ideas against others that might differ or offer a new perspective. Beyond school-sponsored initiatives like these, Deerfield does not dedicate resources to on-campus social advocacy, action, or protest. This includes announcements, meetings, materials and supplies, and staffing. Students who wish to express their views and act on behalf of those views should do  so through approved channels like those named above and in accordance with the Conscientious Speech and Expression Policy. All students are prohibited from engaging in independent social advocacy and protest efforts that disrupt or threaten to disrupt school operations.”

I can see why the school may have chosen to implement this rule. Across the nation, higher education institutions have come under fire for the rowdy, disruptive, and occasionally violent protests on their campuses in response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We attend a tightly knit institution whose mission is educating its predominantly minor student body. Limiting disruptive behavior helps further this mission. 

However, the specific language of this rule is concerning. The rule encourages students to express their views through “approved channels.” The examples given are the Deerfield Forum, which happens once a year and during which students are told to be quiet and listen, and the Open Table, which used to happen approximately once a month before fading into the non-partisan ether.

At the beginning of the year, I brought up my concerns with members of the administration in regards to the Scroll. They assured me that this newspaper was an “approved venue.” However, I was struck by a feeling of unease at just how easily administrators could revoke our school-sponsored status. The Scroll, to publish, requires the dedicated work of multiple faculty members, a space to work and computers to work on, meeting time to work through article ideas and edit rough drafts, and the materials needed to print 450 copies a month. If a writer wrote the wrong thing at the wrong time, it would be almost trivial to shut down the Scroll. No more advisors, no more room, no more budget.

Take another example of activist student speech we take for granted.Students make announcements at sit-down meals everyday, and some of them could easily qualify as “advocacy, action, and protest.” The poignant announcement made every year to commemorate the millions of lives lost in the Holocaust, however politically uncontroversial, still counts as advocacy. Would a similar moment of silence for the victims of October 7th be allowed? What about one for the Russian soldiers lost in the war in Ukraine? A moment of silence for a sufficiently controversial group could easily threaten to disrupt the sit-down meal program, which is a part of regular school operations. Where is the line drawn? Does it even matter?

However, it is the last line that is the most insidious to me. A student can “threaten to disrupt” school operations in any number of ways. Publishing a particularly inflammatory OpEd in the Deerfield Scroll could threaten to disrupt school operations. So could handing out stickers with a political message that a student made on their own time, with their own money. It could mean anything in between those two examples or outside of them because, with enough logical reasoning, anything can “threaten to disrupt the operations of the school.” 

To provide an example, take the example of the Deerfield Scrawl. The Scrawl, as a satire newspaper, often relies on shock value and absurdity to convey a message. The publication of an issue of the Scrawl is likely to offend at least one member of the Deerfield community, who may in turn spend some of their time in class talking about the provocative article in question. The Scrawl threatens to disrupt the operations of the school. That example is lighthearted, but the same could be said for a group of students holding a meeting to discuss attitudes towards abortion on campus.

However, Rule 2.8.2 is only one way in which the misapplication of disciplined nonpartisanship completely chills political engagement on campus. Take, for instance, rules restricting teachers’ abilities to speak about politics.

I love debating with my teachers. To me, there is nothing more intellectually engaging than sharing my opinions with someone I consider much smarter and wiser than me, hearing what they have to say, and weighing the merits of their words in turn. I actually believe that one of the most valuable parts of my Deerfield education was learning how to talk with adults, understanding how to show them respect while still valuing my own opinions. Speaking up to an authority figure that you disagree with while not disturbing the lives of everyone around you is a fundamental skill, and a necessary one in functioning democracies. 

I would have never learned this if every time current events came up in the classroom, a teacher said, “It's not my place to talk about this,” and quickly changed the subject. But regardless of the original intentions behind mandating classroom neutrality, this quick and slightly wary dismissal of anything even remotely related to current events, has become the norm, not the exception. 

The worst part of this rule is its erasure of Deerfield's beautiful history of productive protest. In the early 90s, students held a teach-in in the Hess lobby to learn about women's place in society. This was a response to the rampant sexism and mistreatment of female students that came from Deerfield's return to coeducation. Students held another teach-in in the late 90s to push the school to hold a full day of programming in honor of Martin Luther King. I remember in my freshman year, there was a protest on the dining hall steps calling for increased awareness of the “Don't Say Gay” bill being passed in Florida. None of this would be allowed under the new rule. Yes, none of the hateful, violent speech we are seeing on college campuses would be allowed either, but that was never allowed. We have thrown the baby out with the bath water, thrown out political discussion with hate speech. 

No, I don’t believe that the Scrawl will be banned from publication (despite my fondest wishes) under Rule 2.8.2. No, I don’t believe that teachers will get fired for reading a headline out loud. What I do believe is that the regime of disciplined nonpartisanship has decayed into a tyranny of fearful silence under which community members are afraid of speaking their minds, afraid of the possibility of punishment, aware that anything they say that crosses some imaginary line in the sand could be misconstrued as a violation of one of our community values. 

We should be outraged. But we're not. We're silent. I guess that's just the new normal here.