Freedom to Protest on Campus

The PSC Queens College Chapter has been fighting for the right to demonstrate on campus since the 2024-2025 winter break, when the  Queens College administration and President Frank Wu issued a new “Interim Queens College Guidance Regarding Time, Place, and Manner Regulations for Demonstrations on Campus” and thought no one would notice. These new guidelines are arbitrarily and needlessly restrictive, and infringe on our constitutional rights to free speech as students, faculty, staff, and community members. 

Our chapter jumped into action by organizing over 600 members of the campus community to sign our union’s letter to QC president Frank Wu, urging him to scrap the interim guidance. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) sent its own letter to President Wu, criticizing the unconstitutional overreach of the new guidance.

We followed up by holding a virtual teach-on on January 31, 2025, to inform students, faculty, and staff of their rights under the Henderson Rules, what QC is trying to change, and how we are part of a decades-long organizing and protest tradition at Queens College.

On February 3, 2025, over 100 people rallied and marched on the QC campus. The demonstration began outside of Kiely Hall, where the administration offices are located. This is one of the locations where faculty and staff have held peaceful demonstrations before, and a location now barred to us under the new policy. The demonstration then went inside Kiely Hall to deliver the petition opposing the interim policy to President Frank Wu.  After the petition delivery, the protestors marched to locations significant to the campus’s history of protest, including the Rosenthal Library clock tower named for Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. Some demonstrators carried posters with pictures of historic Queens College protests that the interim policy would now ban.

The Fight Continues

To get involved in the ongoing fight to defend free speech and freedom to protest on campus, or to report any instances of intimidation or repression, please email qcpsc.chapte[at]gmail.com. For more information on the history of activism and struggle at Queens College, email Special Collections and Archives at qc.archives[at] qc.cuny.edu.

Campaign Resources