By Madison Yang
Students expressed frustration with the new CSU-wide Time, Place and Manner policy at the Know Your Rights: Campus Protests event on Oct. 7, held by the ASI Judiciary Branch.
Craig Smith, professor emeritus of the Department of Communication Studies, said there have been cases of offensive speech being posted freely on campuses with no consequences in the past, but TPM policies or content restrictions could regulate such activity.
Two additional faculty members filled out the panel at the Judiciary Branch’s event, Associate Vice President of Student Affairs Jeff Klaus and Director of Student Life and Development Anna Nazarian-Peters.
Klaus elaborated on the ways in which the TPM policy is new, and the ways in which its regulations are not entirely unfamiliar to Long Beach State.
“Every campus had a time, place and manner policy prior to this year, but this is the first time the [CSU] system came up with the policy,” Klaus said.
The new policy follows the budget act of 2024, wherein TPM regulations were mandated by legislature.
As part of this process, the CSU system also said every university must have an addendum. This instruction gave CSULB two weeks to create a new addendum.
However, according to Klaus, the language in the new campus addendum parrots last year’s existing campus regulations. The addendum is now composed of CSULB’s previous regulations as well as the framework for TPM, all of which can be found on the campus regulations website.
Students who attended the meeting felt strongly about the changes and were eager to ask the panel questions. The first student to question the panel probed whether or not everyone in administration was well-educated on the TPM policies, given these rules are new and include lots of detail.
Most students who asked questions did not want to share their personal information.
“That’s what I’m afraid of. That [administration] is not educated on this, and will start taking those restrictive steps on students,” the student said. Upon this statement, other student attendees snapped in agreement.
Another student expressed dismay in the TPM restrictions, as they felt student protests are educational and valuable to the student body.
“These things that are promoting genuine, pro-student, pro-community education are what’s being targeted,” they said.
Students posed questions to faculty members at the ASI Judiciary Branch Know Your Rights: Campus Protests event on Oct.7. Photo by: Madison Yang
Many students found issues with the lack of clarity in certain TPM policies, claiming the ambiguity of each regulation – such as what constitutes ‘sound amplification’– would pose problems in the future when deciding whether or not students should be reprimanded for a protest.
“Amplified is anything used to project your voice,” Nazarian-Peters said.
The audience questioned what kinds of sound-amplifying technology would be prohibited, and whether or not shouting at the same decibel that a technological device could produce goes against policy.
While most student attendees felt these new regulations were a violation to their freedom of speech, other students shared a different perspective, such as fourth-year psychology major Jasmine Argueta.
Argueta argued that students come to school with various backgrounds and it is important to consider how campus is, at the forefront, a place for students to get their education.
“I feel like it’s creating such an unsafe environment for some students and it’s really unfair because the whole point of being in school is to be free of judgment,” Argueta said. “Campus should be unbiased… a campus should be, like, ‘Okay, you can do your quiet protests and what not, but don’t go about putting posters and calling people foul names.’”
ASI Associate Justice Maureen Torrez explained how ASI wanted to present this event to aid Long Beach State students in gaining more information about the new policy and address student concerns regarding future protests.
“We do want a well-educated student body,” Torrez said. “We sincerely do not want them to get in trouble or anything of that sort.”
