Occidental’s Speech, Dissent & Demonstration Policy was updated Aug. 18 according to an email sent on the same day by the Policy Committee, which is composed of senior administrators. Attached to the email was a document entitled “Goals” which explained the changes and the committee’s rationale for each.
The changes include adding an introduction to the policy to show the school’s “affirmative commitments to ‘speech’” with a list of protected forms of expression, adding new headings to make the policy more “organized and accessible,” providing context to what the committee deemed unclear passages and removing “heavy-handed language” in regards to disciplinary action. Also added were new sections on “parallel restorative practices” that can be used in disciplinary proceedings and on “prohibiting the concealment of identity” if it is for the purpose of going against college policies.
The committee members are Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Amos Himmelstein, General Counsel Nora Kahn, Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College Kathryn Leonard, Chief of Staff Lindsay Nyquist and Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Vivian Santiago.
According to Leonard, policy editing began in the Spring 2025 semester and garnered feedback from ASOC, staff, faculty, administrators and the Faculty Council throughout the summer before it was approved and sent to the college community.
These changes come in the wake of Occidental Students for Justice in Palestine (Oxy SJP) protesters’ confrontation with Campus Safety and Code 4 private security guards at President Tom Stritikus’s inauguration April 25, which three students faced conduct charges for.
Kahn said the committee typically considers updating policies at the suggestion of interested parties, whether that is an overseer of the policy or someone who is affected by the policy itself. Santiago said this was also an opportunity to reflect on changes made to the policy a year before and revise sections based on the new challenges that arose.
Kahn said one difficulty was ensuring accountability for misconduct when people participating in demonstrations concealed their identity, and that the committee is trying to find the balance between enforcing policy and allowing the concealment of one’s identity for legitimate reasons.
“What the college has done is say, ‘You can’t wear a mask in order to avoid accountability while you’re committing a violation of policy or law,’” Kahn said. “Our interest is in making sure that everyone in our community and who’s on our property and for those whose safety we’re responsible is held to the same standards of accountability, and we can’t do that if everyone is fully concealed in the course of their conduct on campus. But, this really only comes into play once someone is already committing a violation.”
Oxy SJP spokesperson Tobias Lodish (junior) said the policy updates fall into a pattern of previous reactionary policies that have significantly narrowed what is considered an acceptable form of protest.
“After the encampments in the Spring semester of 2022, student protest became strictly confined to a curfew. Tents and chalk were also promptly banned,” Lodish said via email. “This year, ostensibly after the violence enacted on students at inauguration, in order to have a policy-compliant protest, students must not only duly observe all restrictions but also obediently reserve a space for protest and show their faces at all times for easy identification.”
Lodish said the prohibition of certain forms of identity concealment concerns him.
“How can campus officials determine who is a demonstrator and who is a passerby? By what metrics will they determine whether someone is wearing a face covering for health/religious reasons?” Lodish said via email. “These policies are not designed with students’ safety in mind, often exposing risks to students instead with the express goal of streamlining administrative repression.”
Program Counsel Ross Marchand of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on defending and educating on free speech rights, said that while the college’s prohibition of identity concealment for the purposes of misconduct is in line and reasonable under California Penal Code Section 185, “the language alarmingly leaves out lawful and anonymous political expression.”
“In general, colleges placing a preemptive, blanket requirement on all protesters engaged in political speech to identify themselves to college administrators — untethered to engaging in misconduct — risks discouraging students and faculty from speaking their minds,” Marchand said via email. “We call on Occidental College to clarify that all masking unconnected with the violation of college policies or the law is permitted. This could be accomplished by simply deleting the ‘health and religious’ provision and retaining the language forbidding protestors from concealing ‘their identities to evade accountability while violating any College policy or applicable law.’”
Private institutions in most states are not bound by the First Amendment, but in California, the Leonard Law prohibits the punishment of speech that would be protected off-campus at all universities. Kahn said that while the school follows the Leonard Law regardless, the committee felt it was important to explicitly state the college’s commitment to it.
Masking and identity concealment as it relates to the First Amendment, however, has not been ruled on at the federal level, according to Associate Professor of Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture Jacob Mackey.
“Some of what Oxy is doing here is getting into an area where there’s just no settled Supreme Court decision,” Mackey said. “[Occidental’s] policies have to be in line with the First Amendment, but again […] this has not been tested against the First Amendment.”
According to Campus Free Speech Program Manager Aileen Favilla from PEN America, a free speech advocacy organization, there is a larger trend of “campuses tightening demonstration and assembly policies since 2023.”
“While these policy changes are usually permissible, what we see is a cultural shift seeking to avoid the conflict or friction that frequently accompanies free expression,” Favilla said via email. “In our view, the goal on campuses should be raising a community’s tolerance for dissent and empowering more speech, rather than relying on policy to restrict expression that causes conflict.”
Contact Kawena Jacobs at jacobsk@oxy.edu and Nora Youngelson at youngelson@oxy.edu
