ABSTRACT

STUDENT SPEECH RIGHTS: THE IDEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES OF NARRATIVE IN STUDENT ACTIVISM

by Charlotte Rose Oestrich

This thesis examines the ideological values of the modern American university through an analysis of two student movements centered on speech rights at public universities: the Free Speech Movement (1964) and the CUNY Student Fee Movement (2018). My analysis of these movements draws upon public sphere and social change theory along with a sophistic framework grounded in the ancient rhetorical concept of nomos. I find that student-speech movements provide a valuable example of how student activists use the nomoi of student-as-citizen and the university as a site of critical discussion to elevate the importance of free speech at the public university. Based on an analysis of student activist rhetoric, this thesis calls for additional institutional support for student participation in critical debate.

STUDENT SPEECH RIGHTS: THE IDEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES OF NARRATIVE IN STUDENT ACTIVISM

A Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

by

Charlotte Rose Oestrich

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2020

Advisor: Jason Palmeri

Reader: James Porter

Reader: Michele Simmons

©2020 Charlotte Rose Oestrich

This Thesis titled

STUDENT SPEECH RIGHTS: THE IDEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES OF NARRATIVE IN STUDENT ACTIVISM

by

Charlotte Rose Oestrich

has been approved for publication by

The College of Arts and Sciences

and

Department of English

______Jason Palmeri

______James Porter

______Michele Simmons

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………….. iv

Chapter One: Theorizing Social Change, the Public Sphere and Democracy…………. 1

Chapter Two: The Public University, Speech Laws, and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement……………………………………………………………… 12

Chapter Three: Ideology and Narrative in the CUNY Student Fee Movement……….. 23

Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………. 35

iii

Acknowledgements

I owe a special thanks to Jason Palmeri, Jim Porter, and Michele Simmons for supporting me throughout my graduate career–– it was a pleasure learning from you. I couldn’t have completed this research, or degree, without the help I received from you and my undergraduate professors at Syracuse University, like Patrick Berry, Tony Scott, and Anne Fitzsimmons. I also thank NYPIRG for helping this student find her voice and for providing positive support to communities across New York State. Another very special thank you goes to my kitten, Pepper, whose cute, fluffy face kept me motivated throughout COVID-19.

iv

CHAPTER ONE THEORIZING SOCIAL CHANGE, THE PUBLIC SPHERE, AND DEMOCRACY

In 2014, I started college at Syracuse University. During my sophomore year, I was introduced to the student-run non-profit organization, the New York Public Interest Research Group, popularly known as NYPIRG, when the Project Coordinator spoke in one of my political science classes. He talked about holding New York State politicians accountable, increasing funding for public universities, and protecting New York’s natural resources–– I was instantly hooked. I proceeded to register for an internship with NYPIRG that semester and continued to volunteer with the organization for the remainder of my undergraduate career. During the summers that followed, I worked with NYPIRG’s fundraising campaign in Manhattan; when I was due to finish my undergraduate degree, I decided to apply to be a Project Coordinator with NYPIRG, was hired and placed at CUNY City College of New York (CCNY), and was charged with teaching students how to organize grassroots campaigns. I went from being one of the most involved student activists at Syracuse’s NYPIRG chapter to a leading Outreach Director in the fundraising department, and eventually into a Project Coordinator with some of the highest turnout and involvement numbers of the 2017-18 academic year.

When I was working at CCNY, NYPIRG heard news of proposed changes to the CUNY bylaws that would eliminate earmarked funding for NYPIRG, and any organizations involved in speech activities. In its role as a student organization, NYPIRG has held educational events on pressing issues, distributed literature, collected petitions, and registered people to vote on campus. These activities, and any other activity that promotes critical discourse, are what I refer to as “speech activities” and I assert that they are fundamental to a democracy. Since 1973, NYPIRG has helped pass over 150 pieces of legislation in New York, including the seat belt safety law, five-cent bottle deposit, the ban on fracking, mandatory lead testing for water at public schools, and tuition freezes for public universities in the state, to name a few (NYPIRG). Due to its grassroots nature, NYPIRG is extremely dependent on the funding it receives from CUNY. Without this funding, NYPIRG would be unable to sustain its key operations in educating students and bringing them to speak face-to-face with their representatives. The CUNY speech activity fee issue urged my organization to look into both the legal history of First Amendment interpretations and to critically examine the circumstances of this particular change in funding. Over the course of three months, I helped organize students and increase turn-out to public hearings involving the Board of Trustees. I helped students utilize traditional avenues of activism to spread their narrative opposing the suggested funding changes. The intention of NYPIRG’s professional organizers, people like myself, was to promote student free speech rather than speak for the students. Ultimately, students across CUNY, involved and uninvolved with NYPIRG, turned out in massive numbers to public hearings and convinced the Board of Trustees to reject the proposal to cut funding for NYPIRG and other organizations involved in speech activities.

The CUNY speech issue united people from a variety of publics and inspired my own graduate research when I began my Master’s degree at Miami University in the fall of 2018. I began to wonder, what was the role of rhetoric in acts of resistance? What are the historical foundations for successful student resistance? How do students protect the democratic values the university promises but at times fails to promote? How do differing ideologies influence the

1 framing of debates about student speech rights? I will engage these questions by presenting a framework that emphasizes cultural values (nomos) and applying this framework to an analysis of two case studies: the Free Speech Movement (1964) and the CUNY Student Activity Fee Movement (2018). My analysis of these movements draws upon public sphere and social change theory in order to discuss the transformation of institutional strategies of censorship and activist tactics of resistance regarding speech activities at public universities in the United States. I find that student-speech movements provide a valuable example of how dominant forces resist progressive change by co-opting fluctuating cultural values surrounding speech. The remainder of this chapter will focus on examining existing literature surrounding student activism, justice and democracy, and the public sphere. I will then recover the ancient Greek term nomos and present an analytical framework that researchers can use to analyze the contextual values of a given public.

The University, Student Speech Activism, and the Rise of Neoliberalism

The Free Speech Movement has been a subject of study for researchers in fields such as Rhetoric and Composition (Landau), History (Cohen), and Political Science (Zelnik) but few have demonstrated how student tactics of resistance to repressive university speech policies have transformed since the 1960s and how much changing societal values around identity, citizenship, and democracy have subsequently impacted student’s abilities to create and disseminate knowledge that challenges accepted, and often unquestioned, social norms. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement is described by rhetorician Jamie Landau (2014) as a revolution that broke the “silent and submissive industrialization of higher education” that shaped students as part of a “machine-like system” (594). For Landau, the protests at Berkeley “détoured” the traditional role of the college student, resituating them “from a life governed by in loco parentis to become ‘student-citizens’ who actively and creatively remade their everyday life in college and in American society” (Landau 594). My work builds on Landau’s identification of new social values, students as citizens, and the university as a place of critical discussion, by tracing how these values of the Free Speech Movement have been employed by student speech activists in more recent years. By investigating student-led activism involving the First Amendment, I will expose how these values have been adapted in new contexts and how they are used in tactics of student resistance.

Some scholars have looked at the histories of student activism in university contexts of Asian American student rhetoric (Hoang), sexual identity (Gonclaves), and Black composition- literacy studies (Kynard), and my research extends this conversation by tracing histories of student speech activism from the Free Speech Movement to our current moment. Writing about literacy studies and the Black student movements of the twentieth century, Carmen Kynard (2013) suggests that researchers need to focus on the action, transformation, and emergence of language, not just its passive effects, in order to understand social dissent within a historical frame. She contends higher education is innately connected with hegemonic power; higher education is slow-moving, resistant to change, and often dependent on outside resources. Kynard also presents vernacular discourses as “affirmative of new, constantly mutating languages, identities, political methodologies, and social understandings that communities form in and of themselves, both inwardly and outwardly” (10). While Kynard is specifically focusing on Black student activist literacies, her work played a critical role in how I proceeded with my research

2 and analysis because of how it simultaneously connects social change, hegemonic power, and education. Importantly, she explains literacy as “rather than a set of skills to be acquired according to given hierarchies of understanding and social organization; [that] literacy is a deep engagement with the political (we either construct ourselves as objects or we are subjects) and an issue of context–– personal, social, cultural, geographic, and historical,” (Kynard 32 emphasis original). I see her work as applicable to my analysis because of the contention that Black student activist rhetoric emerged out of specific social and historical circumstances.

Student activism in the 1960s resulted not only in producing new social values but also led to new institutional strategies for the protection of traditional values surrounding students and the university. John Murphy’s “Domesticating Dissent: The Kennedys and the Freedom Rides” (2001), plays an important role in my analysis of student resistance because his work focuses on how dominant forces attempt to quell social dissent. A hegemonic response to a social movement serves to transform the contexts from one that is favorable to the agitators to one that limits them by using discourses of power (Murphy 403). This type of response is used to frame an incident in a manner that makes the establishment seem to be both upholding the rights of the protestors and preserving the known order. Importantly, Murphy argues that the university is not immune to private interests; in fact, the university plays a huge role in creating and emphasizing social values about identity and citizenship. Murphy’s analysis describes how institutional strategies can co-opt transformative values by making dissent compatible with hegemonic systems, in order to control dissent and maintain traditional values.

In order to understand the ideologies and economic contexts influencing the contemporary university, I also turn to critical work on neoliberalism. As neoliberalism has crept into the dominant public discourse, the public sphere has become increasingly privatized, resulting in an overall decrease in the authority ordinary people have to speak (Welch 2008). In “Arrests and Repression as a Logic of Neoliberalism,” Jason Del Gandio defines neoliberalism as, “...a form of global capitalism based on the deregulation of free markets and the privatization of wealth. It subordinates government control to the interests of private wealth accumulation…it is not simply an economic system, but a socio-political discourse that thoroughly permeates the mental and behavioral landscape” (9). Concerning universities as sites of neoliberal production and protection, Del Gandio asserts that “while most colleges are nonprofit institutions, their primary function is to serve economic aspirations of neoliberalism” (8). Further, Scott Welsh (2009) examines how this set of values has invaded public spaces like universities and calls for positive transformation on how students and middle-class faculty view the conditions that influence them. Universities may not seem like a site of neoliberal oppression upon first glance, but they are often places struggling to maintain funding from the state government and control of the status quo rule of their institutions. Despite neoliberal administrative mandates, universities continue to host counterpublics that fight the tangible effects of the dominant groups even when members of these counterpublics are criminalized, marginalized, and/or discriminated against for their actions.

Examining how marginalized bodies are identified through neoliberal “branding,” Jennifer Wingard (2013) explores how the nation-state uses brands to forward its claims of equality and freedom while condemning those who do not ‘fit in’ to particular categories valued by the neoliberal state. According to Wingard, neoliberal branding draws on identification,

3 identity, and affect to move US citizens and give them objects with which to identify and disidentify with when forming both individual and national identities. It “enables the mystification of the material labor of the branded bodies, thus supporting the neoliberal economic systems presently in place… branding leaves bodies as objects of capital– producing surplus value both economically and emotionally” (Wingard 23). Wingard’s theory of branding is essential to my analysis because it helps demonstrate how the dominant forces in the United States created a narrative of student activists as ideologically motivated and potentially threatening to hegemonic structures. Additionally, Wingard contends that branding is used in times of social anxiety in an attempt to quell the fears of the public. For instance, she uses the example of criminalizing student activists at CUNY in the 1970s for protesting university- supported research that economically benefited weapons manufacturing companies (114). Although Wingard’s theory of branding focuses primarily on immigration discourses, the concept can be applied to student activists seeking social change because of branding’s focus on creating narratives that define what others do and are potentially capable of doing.

Branding also permits university administrators to create restrictions on student speech activities by justifying them in relation to a view of the university as a corporate workplace. In “Repression of Student Activism on College Campuses, Wesley Strong discusses a report conducted on speech codes in 2011, which analyzed over 300 universities, and found that two- thirds of them have policies that violate or restrict free speech, and almost unsurprisingly, enforcement of these restrictions was often selective and targeted specific groups or the assembly of those groups (Strong 17). The restrictions on free speech and assembly are directly tied to corporatization and free-speech limitations in the workplace (Strong 16). In order to build and protect the image of the university, administrations limit political activism because it makes the administration look weak and unable to control the university, especially when they want and need financial support from philanthropists and the state (Strong 16).

Roderick Ferguson’s We Demand (2017) outlines the rise of neoliberalism in the university and the shift in dominant discourse to focus on the criminality of students as potential threats to the public. Specifically, Ferguson argues that the “crisis of the contemporary American academy” is the result of an institutional and social backlash to the student movements of the 1960s that challenged existing systems of power (4). He says,

... beginning in the 1960s, modes of power did not simply recoil from difference but instead learned how to bureaucratize it and thereby divest it of its radical and transformative potential. This has engendered a political crisis for minoritized intellectuals and activists and prompted the kinds of campus activism that we now see, responses to the jeopardy in which the bureaucratization of difference has put us (89)

Put differently, the progressive demands of student activists in the 1960s prompted an institutional backlash from those in power who sought to avoid redistributing power. Elites sought to separate the connections between various oppressed groups in order to downplay their importance and resist progressive change (68). Students activists were framed as anti- intellectual, antidemocratic, radical individuals who posed a threat to the social structure, safety, and economy of the nation. Ferguson also brings our attention to the Powell Memorandum of 1971, which he says followed the Western University tradition of alienating people and

4 attempting to protect tradition from ideological assaults and critiques of the free market: “For Powell, constructive change would come from the business sector rather than from leftist political communities within and outside the university” (48). By positioning the business sector as the primary agent of social change, neoliberalism itself allows institutions to extend their dominance into the seemingly most private and protected areas of our lives (Ferguson 75).

Nancy Welch (2005) turns from simply critiquing the neoliberal university to emphasizing the importance of providing students the tools necessary to resist “economic privatization and the concomitant suppression of public voice and rights” by understanding and intervening in working-class struggles of language and publicity (470). At public universities, neoliberal values are found in the institutional concern for controlling potential student activities, opinions, and finances–– resulting in valuing administrator interests more than student interests. Connecting First Amendment rights with neoliberalism, Welch writes, “First Amendment findings have liberalized speech in both meanings of the word: they have codified the expansion of a sphere of personal liberty for thought, association, assembly, and expression; they have also, in the tradition of classical liberalism, reinforced the role of the state in protecting the rights of capital” (479). She continues to argue that the economic and social policies of neoliberalism have “greatly reduced the locations” in which people can exercise their speech rights and gain publicity (474). It is these restrictions that Welch urges scholars and students to critically explore in order to protect public speech rights.

As I will explore later, contemporary legal justifications for speech restrictions on public campuses often center on places where speech is allowed or prohibited rather than on context and time. Michael de Certeau (1984) explains the difference between privileging spatial relationships and privileging time as the difference between “strategies” and “tactics” of power. Strategies, which de Certeau defines as a “triumph of place over time,” are the foundation of hegemonic power because they allow those in power to “capitalize acquired advantages” and “to give oneself give oneself a certain independence with respect to the variability of circumstances” (36). By creating autonomous regulations centered on physical places, strategies can be used to restrict speech criticizing certain values by limiting the locations where such speech can occur. Tactics, on the other hand, are “procedures that gain validity in relation to the pertinence they lend to time–– to the circumstances which the precise instant of an intervention transforms into a favorable situation, to the rapidity of the movements that change the organization of a space, to the relations among successive moments in an action, to the possible intersections of durations and heterogeneous rhythms, etc.” (de Certeau 38). By utilizing time over place, tactics create the possibility for resistance to traditional values through collective action. In this thesis, strategies will be used to refer to administrative actions, and tactics will be used in reference to actions by student activists. I found the concept of strategies and tactics to be absolutely vital in writing this thesis because it brings attention to the university as a public place for the deliberation of issues concerning self-identity, self-determination, and the formation of public values.

Public Sphere Theory, Narrative, and Identity

In order to ground my research, I will discuss theories of the public sphere, civil society, and justice. Public sphere theory is vital for analyzing student speech activism because debates concerning student speech rights often center on identifying university spaces as either public

5 and free or private and limited. Public sphere theory is also important for this thesis because it allows us to understand how private identities are formed by public values and vice versa. Foundational to public sphere theory is Habermas’ (1989) discussion of the historical development of the bourgeois public sphere from the time of feudalism forward by discussing public vs. private, the criteria for ideal speech and deliberation, and theories of what enables public deliberation. The idea of public and private spaces developed alongside increasingly divided sections of society such as religion, nobility, and later evolved with growing markets and capitalism. The bourgeois public sphere is the sphere of private people coming together as the public (Habermas 27); the political task of this group was “the regulation of civil society” (Habermas 52). During the 18th century, public forums became popular in big cities, and in places like coffee shops and salons, high-class men would discuss and problematize issues related to property, taxes, the political, and the governmental. While Habermas’ theory largely emphasizes individual rational thinking, many scholars have since critiqued his definition as being exclusionary and insufficient toward fully conceptualizing the public sphere because it fails to account for power relations (Fraser; Hauser; Squires; Warner).

Michael Warner’s pivotal work, Publics and Counterpublics, explains how the terms public and private are innately connected by their relationship with language and the body; rather than referring to places, the public and private refer to relationships (27). Importantly, Warner expands many of the issues ignited by Habermas’ work by recognizing how the terms “public” and “private” can and should be seen as relations of power that are subject to transformation (34). Warner emphasizes the role of our relationships to concepts, values, and places as a deciding factor in how we label private and public, and how the public sphere debates these issues. He says, “The public sphere as an environment, then, is not just a place where one could rationally debate a set of gender or sexual relations that can, in turn, be equated with private life; the public sphere is a principle instance of the forms of embodiment and social relations that are themselves at issue” (54). Further, Warner draws solid connections between public / private distinctions and counterpublics; for him, counterpublics are defined as scenes of association and identity that transform the private lives they mediate (57); they consider the realms of subjectivity outside of the “jugal domestic family” (58); members make their embodiment and status relevant in a public way by just their participation. Essentially, counterpublics are formed by their conflict with the “norms and contexts of their cultural environment” (63). Distinguishing between publics and counterpublics, Warner defines the public as being self-organized (67), both personal and impersonal (76), constituted through attention (87), and as acting historically (123). However, counterpublics exist as potential avenues for change through the circulation of discourse. They are spaces of circulation “in which it is hoped that the poesis of scene making will be transformative, not replicative merely” (122). Warner’s work is essential for this thesis because it creates a frame for my analysis of student activists. In order to understand the contentions between the different roles of the university, it is essential to understand how we have come to view private and public spaces in university contexts, and how student activist counterpublics have sought to transform spaces in the university.

Fraser’s (1990) widely cited article is important to include in my research because of her detailed critique and expansion of Habermas’ public sphere. Importantly, Fraser contends there are multiple competing publics in which “parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses to formulate oppositional

6 interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs” (123). Importantly, Fraser discusses how inequality can affect public deliberation and exposes the issues surrounding the labeling of certain issues as private and thus not appropriate for deliberation in the public sphere. In order to achieve a more inclusive and participatory democracy, different publics need to be able to deliberate about a variety of connected issues, including social inequality, cultural diversity, and democracy (127). Similarly, Robert Asen’s (2000) discussion of counterpublics defines them as emerging from social inequality and capable of generating an identity grounded in community and solidarity (428). Theories from these works are important for my analysis of student movements because speech issues on college campuses center around the question of the appropriateness of certain issues or activities in the public space of the university. When universities stifle student speech because of outside financial interests, they limit the issues that can be deliberated on university grounds and thus in an informed, participatory democracy. Based on these conceptions, I view student activists and the groups they participate in as counterpublics because of their ability and interest in creating new discursive material that seeks justice in one form or another. College students should be viewed with the respect that they deserve; students are core participants in the political future of the country. Especially now, the “youth” vote (18-29-year-olds) is increasingly concerned with achieving social justice and they have the potential to greatly affect the political reality of the country if they were more involved in elections and political discussion (Rosentiel).

An equitable democratic state benefits from a range of different perspectives because multiple viewpoints can allow citizens to voice their specific concerns, or at least, help citizens understand the values surrounding them. Iris Marion Young (2002) argues that in order to expand democratic practices, political inclusion must be increased and widespread in society through different modes of communication, attending to social difference, representation, civic organizing, and borders of political jurisdiction. Inclusion, writes Young, can be a powerful means of criticizing the legitimacy of nominally democratic practices and decisions because even if political elites disagree with an outcome, “political actors must accept the legitimacy of a decision if it was arrived at through an inclusive process of public discussion” (52). The use of narrative in critical discourse, including public protest, has the potential to create a more inclusive public sphere because of its potential to explain experiences and values from one group to another. Further, Young contends that narrative can be used as a means of giving a voice “to kinds of experience which often go unheard in legal discussions… and as a means of challenging the idea that law expresses an impartial and neutral stand-point above all particular perspectives” (71). Considering the ways in which student speech rights contribute to democratic practices can reveal a more nuanced conception of democracy and justice in the public sphere. Ensuring democratic practices and knowledge-forming rhetoric requires an involvement and understanding of the contemporary and historical values of the university. Ensuring democratic justice, on the other hand, requires a deeper analysis of how society values justice, inequality, and personal freedom.

As I will show in the next chapters, administrators and political elites utilize different narratives in order to create a negative identity of protestors and to maintain control of societal values they deem important. The role of narrative is essential to this thesis because it is but one tactic groups can utilize in attempts to rectify unbalanced social structures. In Community Action and Organizational Change, Brenton Faber examines the process of organizational change and

7 presents narrative, image, and stories as brokers of change (25). As Faber explains, narratives can be an instrument of power that creates basic identities for individuals in a larger group (41). Often, acts of power are subtle and unrecognizable, leading to little resistance against proposed changes. Narratives are particularly important for resistance efforts because they allow individuals to take the “structures of language and use them to create interpretive stories of change” (Faber 63). Individuals can generate power by reproducing and replicating power structures at different times and locations (Faber 120). Distinctly called “image-power,” this discursive product is described as being contextually situated and as having the ability to control how an image of self and opponent is interpreted and perceived by other people (Faber 122). It is this self-reflexivity that can help student activists resist the identities created for them by administrators and create a new narrative of student activism.

Narrative, then, can be used for both social change and the preservation of traditional values because it has the ability to create strong convictions about identities. The dynamic interaction between power and language has also been examined in relation to the political performativity of language and identity. Judith Butler (1997) examines speech and conduct in contemporary political life by clarifying the role of censorship in identity formation and resistance. She writes, “censorship is a productive form of power: it is not merely privative, but formative as well… censorship seeks to produce subjects according to explicit and implicit norms, and that the production of the subject has everything to do with the regulation of speech” (133). As Butler explains, language plays an imperative role in the formation of identity; it can bring a person’s identity into existence as well as threaten its existence through the identification of the “other” (5). Butler’s discussion of censorship enables me to situate debates about student speech rights in relation to a greater conversation of hegemonic power and state-sponsored control of identity through language.

Nomos As An Analytical Framework

In order to develop a framework to understand how student activists worked to enact change in policy, I recover and adapt the classical rhetorical term nomos– understood as something “believed in, practiced, or held to be right” (Jarratt 1990)– to represent the unwritten laws of society. Scholars of nomos have examined it in terms of feminist rhetorics (Jarratt 1991), forensic oratory (Carey), and pedagogy (Scott); however, I employ theories of nomos to investigate the power of language and shifting cultural values in the student narratives and establishment reactions at Berkeley in 1964 and in CUNY in 2018. As Jarratt (1991) suggests, sophistic rhetorical theories of nomos are valuable in understanding and raising marginalized voices because they understand the contextual influence of language in shaping group behavior. I will trace the rise of speech rights discourse at universities by examining particular intervals of student activism at universities over time.

The sophists are recognized for inspiring many rhetorical debates in Ancient Greece, although very little of their actual documents were preserved. Ethos, logos, and pathos are prevailing rhetorical terms, but few are familiar with nomos. This sophistic-era term reached its peak in rhetorical debates in the 5th and 4th century BCE and slowly faded from the field until it’s revival in the 1990s (Jarratt; Carey). The oldest definition of nomos meant “pasture,” or was

8 defined metaphorically as a “range of words” or “habitation” until it was codified in the late seventh century BCE to signify “habitual practice, usage, or custom” and by the fourth century BCE nomos was something “believed in, practiced, or held to be right” (Jarratt 89). The earliest conception of nomos appeared in the late 5th or early 4th century BCE in Dissoi Logoi as part of the concept of opposing arguments. Containing nine different sections, the unknown author of Dissoi Logoi focuses on the seemingly disgraceful, just and unjust, truth and falsehood, the wise and foolish, and judgment and public speaking. Besides focusing on the author’s initial argument that “good” and “bad” are relative terms that have the same meaning when examined closely, we can also explore the rhetorical roots of dissent and opposition. Importantly, we are told, “if a group of people should collect from all the nations of the world their disgraceful customs and they should call everyone together and tell each man to select what he thinks is seemly, everything would be taken away as belonging to the seemly things” (159). So, the seemly and the disgraceful are contextually situated; they are bound to a specific location and culture, during a specific time. In this way, the concept of nomos enables me to demonstrate how activist rhetoric needs to account for temporal changes surrounding the values of a given issue.

Section five of Dissoi Logoi contains the most applicable information regarding social change; the author posits a view of social relations between the “sane” and the “demented” to indicate the contextual and cultural differences of these two groups (162). They write, the demented and the sane, or the foolish and the wise, use the same names and complete the same acts as each other so, therefore, “things are and are not” (163). The difference between the two rests upon the nomos in a given place. Those whose actions are “demented” or untimely in one place are, in fact, “sane” and timely in another. To continue, the author writes,

...we ought to bring up the question whether it is the sane or the demented who speak at the right moment. For whenever anyone asks this question they answer that the two groups say the same things, but that the wise speak at the right moment and the demented at the wrong one. And in saying this, they appear to be making a small addition, “ right moment” or “the wrong one,” so that the situation is no longer the same. I, however, think that things are not altered by such a small addition… (163)

The small addition the author speaks of is instrumental in understanding how opposition to social change forms as well as how to resist it. The “right” and the “wrong” moment rely purely on their social situation; the agents in power will deem any action that goes against the established law and values of society as untimely or taking place at the “wrong” moment. However, we must recognize the social stagnation the author of Dissoi Logoi is arguing against. If society is to judge events under the guise of “timely” action or “sane” rhetors in the public sphere, then social change would never occur because it is rarely viewed as timely by those who wish to maintain societal hierarchies through a universally consistent meaning of justice. Those who call it untimely or unwise will not easily relinquish their power. Thus, nomos is centered on balancing action and power in accordance with the norms of a given time and place and plays an important role in a democracy. Without such scrutinous and participatory actions to question prevailing nomos, injustice would rise as certain interests were unfairly supported more than others.

In the latter part of the 4th century BCE, Aristotle furthered the discussion of achieving justice by considering contextually situated norms while discussing forensic rhetoric and

9 defining the two types of law: written and unwritten. In Rhetoric, he contemplates just and unjust actions and relates them with the two types of law, saying, “...I mean that law is on the one hand special and on the other hand common, the latter being unwritten, the former written, and special being what each [community] has defined relative to itself, and common what is in accord with nature… ” (Arist. Rhet. I.13, 1373b3-9, trans. Reeve). Even though nomos is not directly mentioned, unwritten and written law help distinguish how nomoi supplement areas where universally consistent understandings of justice fall short. In this text, nomos continues to be associated with the habitual, the unwritten, and the special.

Drawing connections between unwritten and written laws, Aristotle states, “...habits are also pleasant (for the habitual has already become natural, as it were; for habit is something like nature, since in fact what occurs often is close to what occurs always, and nature belongs with always, habit with often)” (Arist. Rhet. I.11, 1370a5-8, trans. Reeve). Aristotle’s interrogation of societal laws demonstrates the significance of nomos in achieving justice by partially blending the two types of law. He argues that the habits that guide our actions are similar to the written laws that also guide us. In one sense, we have a binding natural justice and natural injustice for all people, and in another sense, the habitual customs and laws complement the natural, just actions of men supported by written law. In other words, rhetors who utilize nomos could create justice where the written laws fell short or became outdated.

As Carey (1996) discusses, nomos evolved into a robust rhetorical proof when applied to written laws, customs, or values (36). As such, I see its value and potential to impact our understanding of student social movements because students are “training” to participate in democracy. Many traditionally aged college students enter university and gain the right to vote around the same time and, as I will discuss later, there are vast political and economic interests invested in higher education. J. Blake Scott (1995) contends that nomos can be used as a tool to invite students to use deliberation and action to understand how cultural values are created and institutionalized (196). He writes, “sophistic rhetoric… incorporates ethics through its emphasis on nomos, deliberation with oneself and others, and finally action or articulation. It invites students to engage in a true dialectic or mutual search for the best courses in specific situations” (Scott 194). Likewise, Scott Welsh (2012) points out the importance of citizens making sense of their contextual role in society, so they could use that information to achieve democratic emancipation from restrictive rhetoric in the public sphere (17). Welsh also explains that the “sociological imagination” can help create intellectual pivots in public thinking, explaining it as being “composed of the terminologies that people in ‘their everyday worlds’ turn to in order to make sense of the ‘interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self and world” (17). These terminologies, Welsh argues, should contribute to the use of information and development of reason that would achieve “lucid summations,” or, political change (18). Used as an analytic framework for analyzing contextual values of a given public, the concept of nomos can help generate detailed narratives that achieve social justice because of its ability to help citizens to recognize and consider ways to challenge the various structures influencing their identities and rights in a democracy.

Preview of Chapters

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In the second chapter, I will discuss the public university and the value of free speech in a democracy. I will begin by introducing administrative strategies for regulating student development and participation in the public sphere across the first half of the twentieth century. As I will explain, the legal acceptance of “social value” in determining permissible student speech allowed universities to make decisions on behalf of students through in loco parentis (paternalistic) leadership. This chapter will then analyze the rhetorical tactics of student protesters during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement by examining speeches and documents created by student activist Mario Savio and the University of California (UC) Berkeley Administration. In my analysis, I identify three tactics of student speech activism: the use of labor-based rhetoric, “calling out” financial and ideological influences on the university, and the utilization of a nomos-centered narrative as a tool to transform restrictive institutional structures. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the results of the Free Speech Movement and the institutional turn to neoliberalism in the decades following the movement.

The third chapter will begin by introducing the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) and the CUNY Student Activity Fee Movement. I will first analyze how the university proposal to restrict students’ speech activities was justified in relation to a legal case about “viewpoint discrimination” and funding allocation concerns in 2017 at CUNY Queens College. Then, I will analyze CUNY General Counsel’s response as an institutional strategy of censorship that is the result of a conservative, free-market rhetoric clashing with student activist’s inclusive and participatory visions of the university. This chapter’s analysis will focus on how student tactics of resistance have adapted themselves to the challenges of neoliberalism. I conclude the chapter by discussing the implications of this thesis for activism, pedagogy, and research.

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CHAPTER TWO THE PUBLIC UNIVERSITY, SPEECH LAWS, AND THE BERKELEY FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT

Before moving to my analysis of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, I will first review the history of legal and academic interpretations of student speech rights in the earlier twentieth century that helped establish the context in which the activism occurred. The foundation of interpretations regarding the modern American university and the value of speech come, in part, from Alexander Meiklejohn. During his time as President of Amherst University from 1912- 1924, Meiklejohn popularized the idea of higher education acting as a system that would help students “understand human endeavors not in their isolation, but in their relations to one another and to the total experience which we call the life of our people” (Brennan 576). A vocal advocate for free speech, Meiklejohn believed in a liberal education that would expose students to a wide variety of viewpoints. He argued, “democracy can thrive only if there is self-criticism, and that the function of institutions of higher learning in a democracy is to provide such criticism, ‘to challenge’ a society and the beliefs and values of the society” (Lewis 69). Such an education, in his view, would be beneficial toward democracy and freedom because it would “engage students in rational thought and discourse” (Lewis 68). However, Meiklejohn’s ideas conflicted with the traditional understanding of education as an unchanging structure–– one based on a historic vision of the university as isolated from societal issues. For Meiklejohn, education was “revolution, a never-ending experiment,” while for the university, it was “tradition, an institution deeply connected with the past, moving more slowly and cautiously than the rapidly changing society around it” (Brennan 582). As a result, older administrators and instructors at Amherst did not warmly accept Meiklejohn’s quick overhaul of traditional university values. Unfortunately, Meiklejohn’s vision of a democratically charged university, one that holds critical debate at the center of its purpose, collided with the traditional and rather uncontested concept of in loco parentis.

A Latin term defined as “in place of parents,” in loco parentis is a concept supporting the idea that students are not mature enough to make important decisions regarding their future and has been used to reinforce elite beliefs that stabilize and sustain normative values (Landau 595). In basic terms, in loco parentis enabled universities to enforce administrative rules that affected student actions, beliefs, and character near the turn of the twentieth century. Recognized by the American legal system, in loco parentis could be used to justify punishing students independent of public laws by isolating their identity as students from their identity as soon-to-be members of a democratic society. For instance, in 18911 the University of Illinois expelled a student for failing to attend religious church services, in 19132 the Kentucky Supreme Court upheld a policy that prohibited students from eating at or visiting, places not regulated by their college, and even more shocking, in 19283 the Supreme Court ruled that “no reason for dismissing need be given” in the suspension of a student for not being a “typical Syracuse girl” (Miller 79).

1 North v. Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 2 Gott v. Berea College 3 Anthony vs. Syracuse University 12

In addition to the repressive concept of in loco parentis, a major development in the legal regulation of student speech rights came from the categorization of types of speech and, later, locations for speech activities. Zechariah Chafee, one of Meiklejohn’s students and another First Amendment expert, helped introduce the categorization of speech acts as “words which convey ideas and those which are more like acts and may be punished as such” (Haiman 19). In fact, Chafee is credited in the 1942 Supreme Court rationale in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire in which the court says, “It has been well observed that [such] utterances are no essential part of any expression of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interests in order and morality” (Haiman 20). As I will discuss further along, this distinction allowed administrators to adopt regulations restricting certain kinds of speech in specific places and during specific times. The legal acceptance of “social value” in determining if certain speech can be restricted is complicated by the complexities of communication.

While the First Amendment is intended to ensure freedom of expression, the judicial acceptance of permitting an authoritative power to determine the value of speech creates a path for the marginalization of people with viewpoints that conflict with the traditional and economically based values of those in power. As a catalyst of student activism, the rhetorical tactics of resistance utilized by Berkeley’s students during the Free Speech Movement (FSM) need to be examined in relation to the ideological structures surrounding them. In the next section, I will analyze the values of the UC administration as revealed in President Kerr’s writings on the role of the university and compare this to the role of the university argued for by Mario Savio during the FSM. I will focus on three main aspects of the FSM’s rhetoric: the use of labor-based rhetoric, “calling out” financial and ideological influences on the university, and the use of the nomoi student-as-citizen and the university as a site of critical discussion.

Narrative and the Free Speech Movement

In 1963, UC President Clark Kerr traveled to Harvard University to participate in the Godwin Lectures. These lectures by Kerr discuss the transformation of the university over time and assert the role of the modern university, the “multiversity,” to students, faculty, business, and the government. Kerr introduces the multiversity as operating as “more a mechanism–– a series of processes producing a series of results––a mechanism held together by administrative rules and powered by money” (Kerr 15). In Kerr’s perspective, the university has an important role to play in shaping the minds of students, the success of federal goals, as well as in realizing private and public financial gain. Relating the university with industry, Kerr creates a framework where the university is the national focal point for the “production, distribution, and consumption” of knowledge. He says,

The university has become a prime instrument of national purpose. This is new. This is the essence of the transformation now engulfing our universities. The knowledge industry. Basic to this transformation is the growth of the ‘knowledge industry,” which is coming to permeate government and business and to draw into it more and more people raised to higher and higher levels of skill. (Kerr 66, emphasis original)

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In this production-centered narrative, governmental and business interests invest in universities’ creating a meaningful product. One of the products, in turn, is the student who is shaped by the public interests and trained to consume knowledge without questioning its purpose. Similar to any successful capitalistic enterprise, the multiversity must continually expand. As Kerr states, the knowledge industry has a key role to play in the national and even global sphere because of the funding they receive for certain research–– pointing out that forty-one percent of defense contracts for 1961 were concentrated in California (67). Aside from federal grants, Kerr also credits the multiversity with employing over forty thousand people and as having “some form of contract with nearly every industry, nearly every level of government, nearly every person in its region” (Kerr 6). Such concentrated funding, expenditure costs, and multiple interests subsequently draw attention to the “quality” of the student product produced by the knowledge factory.

At Berkeley, it is clear that the university was concerned that student’s participation in anti-racist activism would weaken the quality of their product. In the summer of 1964, students from the University of California Berkeley traveled to Mississippi to fight racial discrimination and brought the “democratic ethos and civil disobedience tactics” engineered by the Civil Rights back to their campus (Cohen 10); students recognized the role of nonviolent protest in transforming long-standing structures of social and political power. The increase of anti-racist student involvement in the Bay Area, like at the Sheraton Hotel protest of March 1964, led to a backlash against student involvement in politics. As Robert Cohen discusses in The Essential Mario Savio, outside influences pressured UC administrators to punish students who broke the law during nonviolent protests because the actions were likely planned on campus (10). The result of this pressure was the condemnation of political interests and organizing unlawful civil rights protests on all campuses by UC President Kerr in May of 1964, followed by a ban on political advocacy speech on the traditional area of free speech on Berkeley’s campus in September of the same year (Cohen 10).

The FSM critiqued the production-centered narrative promoted by President Kerr and rejected the abrupt changes in administrative rules preventing students from conducting political activity on the Bancroft Strip. In the first FSM sit-in at Sproul Hall, on September 30th, 1964, student leader Mario Savio addresses UC Berkeley Dean Williams and student supporters to critique the ideological influence in loco parentis has on Kerr’s knowledge industry. Crafting a student-centered, labor-based narrative, Savio explains that students enter the university dependent on their parents and

instead of suckling at their mother’s or at the breast of their schools, they suckle at the breast of Holy Mother University… Now they’re dependent upon the University. They’re product. And they’re prepared to leave the University, to go out and become members of other organizations—various businesses, usually [...] which they are then dependent upon in the same way (qtd. in Cohen 115)

In Savio’s view, the dependency students have on the university will transform into a dependency on their future employers. Students are expected to function properly as parts of the machine by consuming given knowledge, values, and beliefs or they are punished by the university and/or future employers. In this scenario, students are perpetually controlled by

14 interests other than their own. The true result of this mechanism, according to Savio, is the construction of an institution that “serves the interests and represents the establishment of the United States” (qtd. in Cohen 121). In contrast to Kerr’s use of production-based rhetoric which reinforces the historical power of outside influences on the university, Savio reconstructs this narrative to create new labor-based rhetoric where students have a right to self-determination and autonomy independent of the university. The philosophical narrative of the FSM is framed by Savio as a democratic, student-led response to a university succumbing to outside pressures that do not favor student self-determination. Although universities are often seen as places of radical change, they are, as Kerr points out, inherently conservative institutions and can serve to protect national values (28). Savio discusses the complexity of speech rights on campus and explains the ideological and financial interests behind Berkeley’s ban, saying,

[... the university] stands to serve the needs of American industry, it is a factory that turns out a certain product needed by industry or government. Because speech does often have consequences which might alter this perversion of higher education, the university must put itself in a position of censorship. [The university] can permit two kinds of speech: speech which encourages continuation of the status quo, and speech which advocates changes in it so radical as to be irrelevant in the foreseeable future” (qtd. in Cohen 196)

The two forms of speech mentioned by Savio determine the value of student concerns versus industry concerns. Speech challenging the status quo may have progressive undertones but it must remain theoretical, so it doesn’t disturb the production of students with “American” values. Similarly, speech favoring and helping to enact “radical” change is particularly dangerous to the conservative nature of the university because it likely opposes the industry-determined values. Allowing speech that can affect the overall structure of the university poses a risk of breaking the dependency students have on the university and their future employers.

Savio emphasizes that the university’s justification for the speech ban is built on a foundation that separates the role of citizens with the role of students on campus. In a speech given before marching toward the site of the UC Board of Regents meeting in November, Savio critically reframes the multiversity’s production-centered narrative to identify students as workers with agency and group-determined values rather than seeing students as traditional industrial products, stating,

You’re always a citizen, but perhaps you’re not always functioning as a worker in a particular plant. You’re always a citizen even when you’re in that plant regularly… when the university censures its students for taking an active role as citizens—citizens they are, whether on campus or off—we should look upon it in the same way as a vile and pretentious usurpation of powers of the courts and likewise as a complete flaunting of the ideals of the First, the Fourteenth Amendments, of the whole constitutional tradition, because we’re not . . . citizens just off the campus, we’re citizens right now (qtd. in Cohen 164).

In Savio’s view, the university’s drawing of a distinction between students and American citizens denies students the due process of the ruling law that is promised as equal protection. Savio is directly accusing the university of bypassing the observed legal actions of student-

15 citizens in order to make more restrictive, and paternalistic, policies. In the eyes of the FSM, the issue was less centered on a legal principle and more focused on the moral principle of a democratic society that involves all citizens. Essentially, Savio is arguing for a vision of a higher educational system where students are critically encouraged and taught to recognize and challenge cultural values to their studies–– a vision similar to Meiklejohn’s.

Restricting student participation in the public sphere through campus speech policies can be the result of financial and political pressures facing the university. Even though the Berkeley administration frames the enforcement of the speech ban as necessary to maintain the university’s neutrality, the reality is that the university receives politically motivated financial support from outside interests. Kerr’s university mechanism must receive outside funding to continue to function; therefore, it is the university’s interest to create administrative rules that their investors value. The dependency created through in loco parentis is not one-sided; the knowledge industry needs the parts of the machine to function properly in order to achieve the goals they invest in. Instead of accepting the national value ascribed to the ruling of the courts on First Amendment questions, the university was removing students’ legal right to participation in the public sphere by restricting their ability to produce, access, and share politically relevant ideas in their role as students. Berkeley’s ban on political advocacy would allow the university to determine the lawfulness of a student’s speech and adequate punishment. Savio explains the university’s interest in controlling interpretations of the law when he says, “They want to decide when you’ve abused your freedom of speech. They want to decide, not the courts, not the Constitution” (qtd. in Cohen 168). In recognizing the ideological influences of Berkeley’s speech ban, Savio frames the university’s actions and punishment of student activists as suppression of student civil rights.

Given the timing, it is unsurprising that Savio compares the resistance efforts of the FSM to those born from the Civil Rights Movement. Savio argues that civil rights protestors are working to “bind the wounds which separate society… bind up the wounds that put next to one another things which should be one subordinate… to the other” (qtd. in Cohen 165). He then goes on to make a detailed connection between civil rights’ resistance and the FSM’s resistance, saying, “This is the kind of thing . . . that we want to do here. And we’re demanding the tools to do it. Those tools are certain procedural rights, rights to the First and Fourteenth Amendments… students certainly should be the ones who have the tools in their hands, the tools of freedom of expression, the tools whereby these wounds can be bound up…” (qtd. in Cohen 165). Savio and the FSM are demanding the right to interpret the law as well as to provide student input on the issues that affect them the same way outside interests do. In more than one way, Savio is demanding the university recognize the essential influence of students, just as the outside interests do, for, “[...] student citizens on the campus can do quite as much damage and, in many instances, more than student citizens off the campus” (qtd. in Cohen 164).

The intensity of the FSM hit its peak in December during Savio’s famous “Bodies Upon the Gears” speech, demanding freedom by discussing the questionable nature of the “system” and the role students have in stopping the “machine” from operating alongside the status quo any longer. To provide supportive reasoning as to why students are even participating in this issue in the first place, Savio once again challenges President Kerr’s portrayal of students as products in the knowledge industry. He says the students are a “bunch of raw materials” who “don’t mean to

16 be made into any product, don’t mean . . . to end up being bought by some clients of the university, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone!” (qtd. in Cohen 187, emphasis mine). In this way, students demanded the right to self- determination and recognized their agency to affect change in the public sphere; FSM students fought for the right to participate in the law-making of their society both on and off the campus. These students wanted to ensure the maintenance of their civil rights and used a democratic and participatory centered nomos-narrative to craft their public argument. Students like Savio used the youth’s increased interest in Civil Rights politics to rally students in support of institutionally recognizing these students as autonomous, salient political actors.

Since student political speech and activities had few legal protections at the time, students had few formal outlets to propose and provide input on administrative rules. In this case, the primary option for student resistance was to partake in collective social action in the form of mass sit-ins. One way the students could use civil disobedience to resist a law is by repeatedly violating it until it is repealed, which was the method of many Civil Rights activists. When a repeated violation of the law does not successfully repeal a law, Savio passionately argues that the only other option occurs

...when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all (qtd. in Cohen 188)

These famous lines utilize a nomos-centered narrative to demonstrate the value and power students have to affect change. In this case, Savio is promoting a wider acceptance and recognition of students as holding political, economic, and social power. Additionally, these lines demonstrate the overall narrative created by Savio during the FSM, a narrative that conceptualized a massive disconnect between students and administrators. By framing the administrators, those who determine “the operation of the machine,” as being out of touch with the current values of the public, and by calling for students to stand up for the social values they have prioritized, Savio is demanding equality and respect for student knowledge-making practices. Essentially, Savio is calling attention to the ethical issues created in the public sphere when powerful private interests invest in controlling the values of higher education institutions. Individually, students have little power against the university or powerful outside forces, but together they can prevent the ideologically motivated “knowledge factory” from imposing certain values on students by limiting their exposure to conflicting viewpoints.

Urging students to challenge the discordant values of a partisan public university, Savio relies on labor-based rhetoric that shows the value of students by conceptualizing them as workers with rights. This type of rhetoric was attractive for a lot of people not only at UC Berkeley but also across the country. The FSM succeeded in creating tactics of resistance, reinstated political speech on Berkeley’s campus and formed the foundation for other student activism to come–– including anti-Vietnam War protests. Not only did the FSM bring attention to the role of students as citizens and workers but it also brought more attention to the public

17 university as a space for the public deliberation of common interests. Universities began to be viewed by some as places of resistance and democracy, and what soon followed was a discussion centered on the ideological influences on the university and the role of higher education institutions in providing resources, tools, and training for participation in public discourse as a critical component of a free society.

Shifting Laws and Ideologies of Student Speech since the FSM

In "’Obey the Rules or Get Out’: Ronald Reagan's 1966 Gubernatorial Campaign and the ‘Trouble in Berkeley,’” Michelle Reeves explains how the FSM sparked debate over the limits of academic freedom and the role of partisan politics in university affairs, as well as how political actors politicized public fear of political dissent and social conflict (277). To borrow Wingard’s term, student activists were branded as ideologically motivated agents seeking social disruption. Reagan’s infamous “get-tough” approach to law and order social issues built the foundation for the historical identification of student activists as a threat to traditional American values. This narrative allowed Reagan’s campaign to shape an issue out of the campus protests stemming from UC Berkeley and call for the removal of political interference on UC campuses. Regarding the issue of student protests, academic freedom, and public safety, Reagan’s campaign suggested he provide the following line of reasoning for punishing student activists:

Academic freedom does not… include the right to use the university as a place to make public pronouncements and demonstrations unrelated to scientific inquiry, and which are designated to embarrass our government’s foreign policy [read: Vietnam] or promote an alien ideology [read: Communism]. Academic freedom also does not mean allowing a minority of students and ‘non-students’ to intimidate or interfere with the educational process of the majority of students who are seriously interested in obtaining an education (Reeves 288)

Essentially, Reagan called for the university to be free of all “political influence” while simultaneously increasing governmental interference in the “marketplace of ideas” when certain ideas threatened the traditional social values of the country. This call was the beginning of a legal focus on content neutrality, distinctions between public and private spaces on university grounds, and the legal obligation of universities to protect different viewpoints. Reagan’s logic creates a distinction between “right” and “wrong” actions and values, built along different ideological lines than those of FSM.

Ferguson (2013) contends the progressive demands of student activists in the 1960s challenged the systems of power that sought to restrict the possibilities of marginalized people and the future of the environment; these progressive demands were primarily centralized on increasing the chances that people have for self-invention and collective well-being (4). Discussing the Powell Memorandum of 1971, Ferguson identifies the influence of Right-wing ideology in marking student activists as “agents of social disorder” because the “demands for social chaos [...] would threaten the ‘free enterprise system’ and ‘the American political system of democracy’” (37). The “free enterprise system” enabled a financial codependency between the university and governmental interests and became an institutional strategy to reframe activist

18 tactics as working against American interests. Created during the initial rise of neoliberalism, the memorandum separates the connections between oppressed groups in order to downplay their importance by creating a narrative that labels students as anti-intellectual and undemocratic (68). As products of a greater system, students started to be viewed as more of an inconvenience than a benefit; simply put, student resistance threatened the continuity of traditional values essential to the financial interests of the university. In order to provide more protection for the traditional values supporting the free-market system, the Powell Memorandum sought the promotion of corporate personhood, where corporations have “rights” similar to people and as such, they must be represented and defended (Ferguson 38). Although these corporate interests were framed as protecting “minority” rights and constitutional protections, the memorandum created a new institutional strategy that sought a legal ability to value financial interests above social, or student, issues.

Following the media attention received by activists like those in the FSM, universities as well as federal and local governments needed to be able to legally define public and private places where speech activities could legally be restricted. The 1965 Supreme Court decision in Tinker v. Des Moines' determined, “the rights of free speech and assembly, while fundamental in our democratic society, still do not mean that everyone with opinions or beliefs to express may address a group at any public place and at any time” (Haiman 40, emphasis mine). This ruling distinguished locations for free speech from places where speech could be restricted by ruling in favor of students wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. Although this ruling was decided in favor of student speech rights, it also created a legal argument for the restriction of certain rights afforded to citizens by the Constitution by creating exceptions for certain speech in certain places. The term “public forum” was first used in the 1970s to describe public places and was then popularized after Perry Education Association v. Perry Local Educators’ Association (1983) determined there were three categories of access to places used for expressive activities (Hudson). Formally established as the public forum doctrine, this approach is described as “an analytical tool used in First Amendment jurisprudence to determine the constitutionality of speech restrictions implemented on government property,” and is used to decide whether groups should have access to engage in expressive activities on such property (Hudson).

Under forum analysis, government property is subject to varying standards of speech rights depending on the historical use or designated purpose, and falls into one of three fora categories: public, limited or designated, and private (Hutchens & Fernandez 110). Speech activities in public places have historically been defended as a “marketplace of ideas,” based on Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s opinion in Abrams v. United States (1919). Dissenting from the majority, who ruled to prosecute an anarchist for his anti-war views, Justice Holmes writes, “...the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas — that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out” (Schultz). Building upon this concept of the “marketplace of ideas,” the public forum doctrine asserts that any reasonable restrictions within the traditional or designated public forum must adhere by the time, place or manner test where the restrictions are justified without referring to the content of the speech (content neutrality), they must be “narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest,” and can have restrictions so long as they “leave open ample alternative channels for communication of the information” (Davis 276). The public forum doctrine, therefore, reasserts

19 the value of a “marketplace of ideas” by encouraging democratic participation by allowing the “widest possible range” of information and alternative viewpoints (Haiman 428).

While the public forum doctrine has guided the ways in which speech may be restricted in particular places, place-based restrictions on speech activities have recently come under much scrutiny. Davis’s 2004 article, “Assessing Constitutional Challenges to University Free Speech Zones Under the Public Forum Doctrine,” questions the legality of speech zones as lawful restrictions of time, place, or manner of speech. Davis points out that an increasing number of universities were implementing speech restriction policies through the public forum doctrine even though they had not been legally tested at the time. The sudden change in university speech policies could suggest an increased interest in controlling or regulating student speech activities for a variety of reasons. However, Davis concludes that “static place restrictions” which banish student expression to limited areas of the university are “unwise and potentially unconstitutional” because, ultimately, students know where best to express their message (269).

In a more recent legal review, Hutchens & Fernandez (2018) expand criticisms of static place restrictions on speech activities by examining the role of the university, the democratic values surrounding the open exchange of ideas, and the role of viewpoint neutrality in creating constitutional speech regulations on college campuses. When universities rely on static place restrictions to reduce free speech opportunities for students, we need to question the intention behind the action. Hutchens & Fernandez explain that some individuals and groups who weigh in on campus speech issues are motivated to “curtail actions by public colleges and universities viewed as overly partisan and left-leaning” as well as “suppress perceived liberal predilections in higher education, even if it means suppressing speech or academic freedom in certain situations” (108). These right-wing concerns about left-wing speech on campus have transformed from a focus on student civil rights into a critique of how public funds can and cannot be used to create and disseminate counterdiscourses.

In 1999, a group of students at the University of Wisconsin challenged the student- sponsored funding of LGBTQ+, environmental, and multicultural student groups at the university4. By arguing that the allocation of student funding to groups that conduct “ideological” speech is discriminatory to contrasting viewpoints, students with conservative viewpoints opposed the nomos of the university as a place of critical discourse. These students’ reaction to increased left-wing speech on campus represents a larger response by the right-wing that equated funding from the student activity fee with speech rights — asserting that students had a right not to pay for speech with which they disagreed. In this situation, conservative students resisted discourse created by left-wing counterpublics on their campus and sought their removal from the university public by prohibiting funding to these groups based on their political and social values. When this case reached the Supreme Court, the Court unanimously ruled that “mandatory student fees can be used to support the activities of recognized student organizations” based on the idea that “universities possess significant interests in encouraging students to take advantage of the social, civic, cultural, and religious opportunities available in surrounding communities and throughout the country” (Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth). Moreover, the Court determined the only constitutional

4 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth (2000) 20 requirement to protect speech activities at the university is viewpoint neutrality–– meaning nothing more and nothing less than that viewpoint must not be a factor in the allocation of the fee–– and this neutrality could be achieved through an optional refund system for students who opposed how their fees were used (Hutchens & Fernandez 119). This ruling is important because it recognizes student autonomy in the “marketplace of ideas” and makes legal commentary on the use of mandatory student activity fee funding for speech related activities.

Southworth represents an overall reconfiguration of the public sphere of the university; it recognizes the nomos of the university as a place of critical discourse while also adhering to the neoliberal value that students have a right to a “refund” if they disagree with speech that their fees have funded As a result, students are critically framed as consumers of speech in contrast to the labor-based narrative from the FSM, which portrayed students as workers producing knowledge. Another case, Queens College Students For Life v. CUNY Board of Trustees (2017), exemplifies the transformation of student speech regulations to include student finances and financial autonomy. In this instance, student group Queens College Students For Life applied to CUNY Queens College for “registered” status in order to “reserve meeting space, invite speakers, and receive funding from mandatory student activity fees,” and their application was inexplicably delayed and then rejected (Alliance Defending Freedom). The right-wing student organization claimed the failure to identify their group as a registered student organization constituted viewpoint discrimination in the funding practices of Queens College. In the settlement, Queens College agreed to remove any viewpoint discrimination by reviewing its funding policies, eliminating student referendums regarding the student activity fee, and to provide additional appeals for those denied “registered” identification; this decision is problematic, however, because to remove a student referendum–– a democratic process where students vote on whether or not to provide funding to specific groups who engage in speech activities–– and put funding decisions in the hands of university could, ironically, lead to further unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. By labeling certain groups as not qualifying for student-controlled funding because they partake in ideological speech activities, university administrators would have the discretion to base funding decisions for these groups based on their viewpoints.

A democratic rhetoric can be used to further social justice goals by increasing the visibility of marginalized groups, but it can also be used by hegemonic actors attempting to resist new nomos by transforming their value. In “Power, Publics, and the Rhetorical Uses of Democracy,” Candice Rai addresses this issue. She writes,

The public sphere is predicated on the powerful faith that rational deliberation among private citizens about matters of public concern will produce a more inclusive, empathetic, and just society. The sheer moral force of these promised public goods is capable of obscuring gaps between democratic ideals and material realities, eliding the inherent contradictions within the democratic project, and legitimizing arguments that make use of democratic rhetorics, regardless of content or social consequence (39)

In the context of the university, the “material realities” Rai refers to take the form of the funding questions raised by Southworth and Queens College Students For Life. In the same context, the promise of individual freedom and democratic justice can obscure the liberatory protections true

21 marginalized viewpoints gained as a result of the social unrest in the 1960s. Even though college students today undeniably experience more free speech privileges than their earlier counterparts, the speech rights gained by college activists in the 1960s have been under threat by hegemonic challenges to the nomos of the university as a place of critical discussion.

As I will show in the next chapter about the CUNY Student Activity Fee Movement, today’s university administrators continue to resist the nomos of students as citizens by using hegemonic values to justify the removal of specific speech freedoms and the silencing of specific student organizations advocating for progressive change, and the limiting of democratic actions designed to protect autonomous, non-viewpoint discriminatory allocation of student funds for speech activities. The following chapter will investigate ways in which student activists at CUNY both built upon but also transformed the rhetorical tactics of the FSM as they fought to retain student control of funds for speech activities.

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CHAPTER THREE: IDEOLOGY AND NARRATIVE IN THE CUNY STUDENT FEE MOVEMENT

Just as activists during the Free Speech Movement resisted the university's narrative of the knowledge industry to gain protections for political advocacy on Berkeley’s campus, CUNY students challenged an administrative action that would limit student-citizen autonomy to participate in critical discussion at the university. Through an examination of three direct sources, “Explanation regarding Student Activity Fee (SAF),” from the CUNY Board of Trustees, “Memorandum,” and “Testimony,” from a CUNY student and chairperson of the New York Public Interest Research Group, I will identify the rhetorical tactics used by student activists as the use of consumer-based rhetoric, “calling out” financial and ideological influences on the university, and the use of the nomoi of student-as-citizen and the university as a site of critical discourse. It may be noted that many of these tactics are similar to those used by Savio in the FSM, however, the difference between those tactics and NYPIRG’s tactics can be found in how NYPIRG responded to the context of the neoliberal university. Savio fought a battle for the right to perform speech activities at public universities; in this new context at CUNY in 2018, students fought for the right to allocate funding for speech activities through elections–– while also allowing individual student “consumers” the right to ask for refunds if they disagreed with the viewpoints expressed by a recipient of these funds.

To begin, some background information on the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) and its relationship with CUNY and New York State is necessary. Operating as a 501(c) for over forty-seven years, NYPIRG has provided college students with volunteer, educational, and internship opportunities that directly impact their communities while also providing professional work experience. By working with professional staff to lead campaigns on a variety of urgent issues, students learn “skills that make them more active members of their community, enhances their academic experience, and prepares them for successful entry into the workforce” (NYPIRG Students). Some issues the organization focuses on are voter rights and mobilization, higher education affordability, hunger and homelessness outreach, the environment, New York City mass transit, and consumer protection (NYPIRG Students). What is unique about this organization is that they are a non-partisan, non-profit group dedicated to helping students become active participants in democracy by teaching them the skills they need to work on the issues students determine are important. As a result, NYPIRG has created an identity for itself as the largest student-run advocacy group in New York and is popular across ideological spectrums.

NYPIRG is able to function on college campuses because of the funding it receives from CUNY as an allocation of the student activity fee. Each NYPIRG chapter has a Board of Representatives composed of students from their particular university and these representatives are elected each year in a campus-wide election (NYPIRG Students). Additionally, NYPIRG also has a student-elected Board of Directors composed of students from the college campuses with a NYPIRG chapter. The Board of Directors oversee the goals of the organization, determine which issues to work on, and have control over the Executive Director of the organization. In order to educate and engage students, NYPIRG hires professionally trained staff at each chapter, called Project Coordinators (like myself during my time at CCNY), with the funding received by

23 student fees. Every two years, NYPIRG holds a campus-wide referendum, individual to each chapter’s campus, where students vote on whether or not to continue granting earmarked funding to the organization through the student-created, student-controlled student activity fee. For students whose views fall in opposition to a group their campus voted to fund, a refund option for that specific fee allocation is offered. If a student chooses to receive a refund, NYPIRG is legally obligated to give them the portion of the student activity fee allocation received by the organization. Thus, NYPIRG is the recipient of democratically allocated student funds and, in return, offers professional work experience to students located on campus. In a sense, NYPIRG represents the student-citizen nomos formalized by the FSM and also constitutes a counterpublic that uses “the poesis of scene making” to positively transform power relations in the public sphere (Warner 122). Often, these counterdiscourses can lead to calling out specific political actors in an attempt to hold them accountable to promises made to their voters.

NYPIRG is popular among many on New York campuses because the organization fights budget cuts to CUNY and SUNY while advocating for increased funding to meet the changing needs of all students. For a university system founded as “a vehicle of upward mobility of the disadvantaged” and to educate the “whole people,” institutional support to educational endeavors is of the utmost importance to many students on CUNY campuses (City University of New York). Although Governor Cuomo is an identified Democrat and generally takes stances in the same direction as NYPIRG, some of the governor’s policy initiatives are in opposition to his public promises. For instance, in 2018, Governor Cuomo announced that despite his promises to the public to increase funding to public universities, he would continue to cut funding for CUNY by roughly $485 million (Yee). This cut is justified by a narrative of reducing inefficiency, however, this funding is also essential in reaching the ever-increasing administrative costs at CUNY (Yee).

When state or federal funding to public universities is decreased as the overall maintenance costs increase, universities are forced to recover funds through additional budget cuts that are then justified by efficiency standards. These neoliberal reforms, which place more value on fiscal profits than on student education, represent only a small aspect of neoliberal strategies of control. Other neoliberal strategies include “raising tuition, breaking unions, outsourcing work––degrading the quality of education while raising the costs on students and workers” (Strong 25). These neoliberal strategies have come to dominate the American university; however, student activists have responded by forming counterpublics in conflict with these norms. In response to student opposition to these neoliberal strategies, NYPIRG assists students in organizing, rallying, and testifying for increased investment in CUNY at a state level. The remainder of this chapter will analyze the student activist rhetoric in the CUNY Student Activity Fee Movement and demonstrate a contemporary shift toward consumer-based narratives.

Resisting Neoliberal Strategies of Censorship with Consumer Narratives

Even though the Queens College Students For Life v. CUNY Board of Trustees (2017) settlement (discussed in last chapter) implicated only Queens College in viewpoint discriminatory funding practices, CUNY’s newly appointed General Counsel, Loretta Martinez, used the case as justification to propose changes to the CUNY bylaws that would remove all

24 earmarks for speech-related activities, put university administrators in charge of allocating student activity fee funding to speech-related student groups, and disallow activity fee allocation to outside organizations at all CUNY schools. In a document distributed on April 11, 2018, titled, “Explanation Regarding Student Activity Fee (SAF) Review and Recommendations,” the General Counsel cites a legal obligation to “remedy legal concerns about the lack of viewpoint neutrality in CUNY’s recognition and funding allocation procedures in relation to student speech activities” in order to protect students First Amendment rights (“Explanation” 1, emphasis mine). She continues to state,

The changes require viewpoint neutrality in the recognition and funding of student intramural teams, media/publications, organizations, associations, clubs or chapters. Referenda seeking to allocate funding to any student speech activity listed above are disallowed and in the place of referenda is created an annual viewpoint neutral funding process for such speech activities. (“Explanation” 1, emphasis mine)

The use of the term “viewpoint neutrality” incorrectly assumes that all CUNY schools, not just CUNY Queens College, have been found by courts to allocate student activity fee funds in a discriminatory manner, especially in regard to “speech activities.” The General Counsel also uses the term “student speech activities,” to broadly identify any speech or activity on CUNY campuses that has political or social implications. Combined, this framing implicitly advocates for a return to in loco parentis style regulations and rejects the student-citizen nomos by shifting control of the student activity fee into the more “responsible,” and more informed hand of CUNY administrators. In this way, the student activity fee issue is similar to the paternalistic rule of the Berkeley administration insomuch as both administrative parties claim to function in the best interests of its students and reject their status as citizens with political power. Martinez then expands on the necessity of administrative control based on what she views as an insufficient democratic allocation process. She writes,

CUNY students have expressed opposition to changes in the university’s long-standing referenda process, citing the “democratic” nature of the current system. Although a popular majority vote on an issue certainly can represent a “democratic” method of decision, it does not protect the rights of the minority in the 1st Amendment context to speak or refrain from speaking. Moreover, the Board [of Trustees] has expressed its concern in the past that only a very small percentage of CUNY students vote on referenda in student elections, thereby casting doubt that these votes on student activity fees represent the views of a majority of students that pay [student activity fees]. Balancing and respecting the rights of both minority and majority views with regard to student speech activities is necessary (“Explanation” 2)

The narrative created in this messaging is that the current process of allocating funding is not democratic, as the students claim. Martinez also creates an image of the students opposing these recommended changes as being uninformed about the reality of elections and democratic procedures. Thus, the General Counsel is working to establish a paternalistic and trustworthy administrative identity that supports allowing CUNY administrators to determine which organizations and groups receive funding from the student activity fee because of an assumed lack of student knowledge and responsibility. This paternalistic action is similar to the UC

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Berkeley administrators punishing specific students and organizations loudly vocalizing student citizen nomos and university as a place of critical discourse nomos.

The General Counsel’s explanation also creates an image of NYPIRG as the unconstitutional recipient of student activity fee funding. She defines the activities NYPIRG conducts as “clearly speech activities that cannot be funded in a viewpoint discriminatory manner via referenda” and brings attention to the “approximately 1.3 million dollars” sent to “an external organization, NYPIRG” (“Explanation” 3, emphasis mine). In labeling NYPIRG’s activities as politically motivated and “external,” the General Counsel ignores the underlying reasons (nomos) the organization formed as a student advocacy group in 1973: to recognize and promote student agency, responsibility, and concern for their society. In turn, the General Counsel’s narrative frames NYPIRG as an untrustworthy, irresponsible, partisan group that unconstitutionally uses student funds to forcibly engage students in issues they disagree with or which can disrupt the status quo of their society. It is in this sense, again, that one can see the commonalities between the administrative argument in favor of regulating student speech on UC Berkeley’s campus in 1964 and CUNY’s administrative argument for controlling the funding that promotes student speech in 2018. For many uninvolved observers, the General Counsel’s recommendation may seem justified. However, CUNY’s argument is grounded in a false reading of legal precedent and requirements that supports a return to in loco parentis style leadership.

In response to the memorandum produced by General Counsel Martinez, NYPIRG produced a memorandum to demonstrate how the General Counsel’s image of NYPIRG was contradicted by legal precedents and by the personal narratives of its members. This memo, released on April 14, 2018, imitates the structure of the General Counsel’s explanation by creating a legal justification in support of the current funding practices. As the forefront strategy, the organization identifies the inconsistencies in the General Counsel’s recommendation by referencing the legal precedents included and excluded in the Counsel’s recommendation. Most importantly, the organization identifies itself as complying with the First Amendment because students who do not wish to fund NYPIRG may obtain a refund of their portion of the student activity fee allocated to the organization. NYPIRG’s response supports and develops the student- citizen nomos by using historical tactics of resistance adapted to their specific context to challenge neoliberal values.

NYPIRG’s memorandum addresses specific comments from several different court cases and begins to construct a narrative of the General Counsel as untrustworthy, swayed by outside interests, and seeking to increase administrative control at the detriment of student free speech. The student memorandum argues that Martinez’s argument is “wrong and conspicuously ignore[s] controlling case law,” continuing to say there is no “constitutional reason for CUNY to amend its Bylaws either to eliminate referenda funding of student groups or discontinue funding of student groups…” (“Memo” 1). The organization follows a similar method of presenting legal opinions as the General Counsel’s explanation did; NYPIRG points out that in Southworth (2000), the Supreme Court found that viewpoint-neutrality is not the only protection against compelled speech and a “refund system” could protect student First Amendment interests as well (“Memo” 2). As mentioned earlier, a refund for students who do not wish to fund NYPIRG is offered and advertised at campus chapters. NYPIRG’s memo proceeds to use a tactic, similar to the FSM, that frames the proposed changes as being influenced by outside interests by creating

26 an image of Martinez as misinformed and purposely deceiving the Board of Trustees. The largest discrepancy in Martinez’s argument that NYPIRG addresses is the defense of the current refund system by Governor Cuomo when he was serving as New York’ Attorney General in 2000 (“Memo” 2). The memo draws attention to the discrepancies in information that control the image created by the General Counsel; while the General Counsel’s creates an image of NYPIRG as unconstitutionally funded, the organization’s resistance highlights the legal evidence in their favor, using student citizen nomos to validate funding speech activities without interference from outside interests, including the university administration themselves.

Even though the proposed changes don’t directly restrict speech rights, if accepted, these changes would severely limit speech activities on CUNY campuses. Restricting the reach of the student activity fee to exclude “outside organizations” and giving explicit control of funding allocation to an administrative board, rather than allowing a student election to determine funding allocation, would essentially restrict student speech by seeking to eliminate the organizations that make such speech activities possible. Contrary to the FSM, which used student-as-worker rhetoric, the CUNY student activity fee movement uses rhetoric that frames students as consumers with a right to determine how they spend their finances. This shift can be attributed to the rise of neoliberal politics that position the university as a business and students as consumers. While universities often appeal to the notion of students as consumers to uphold neoliberal policies, NYPIRG activists savvily adapt this rhetoric to argue in support of expanding opportunities to create and disseminate alternative discourses. During the FSM, Savio argued that students were workers in the “knowledge industry,” and, as such, deserved the constitutional protections afforded by the First and Fourteenth Amendments even though they had historically been viewed as unable to make decisions for themselves. However, in this contemporary scenario, the student activists have to respond to the neoliberal values guiding society’s institutions and successfully argue that students are also responsible enough consumers to determine proper allocation of funding without in loco parentis-style restrictions.

NYPIRG’s tactics of resistance are in direct opposition to neoliberal strategies of control because they focus on building coalitions among students concerned with social justice. On April 30th, hundreds of students gathered at the Board of Trustees’ public hearing and continued to protest the General Counsel’s recommended changes. During this hearing, Queens College student and NYPIRG Chairperson Smitha Varghese took the stand to deliver a powerful testimony that produced an image of an unorganized, unjustified legal attack from a biased authority figure who wanted to silence student voices by removing the most vocal voices opposed to status quo. Just as Savio’s “Bodies Against the Gears” speech was the climax of the FSM, Varghese’s testimony was the climax of the CUNY Student Activity Fee Movement. Savio spoke to thousands of students inside an academic building, Varghese had so many supporters that fire-safety codes barred all of them from entering the hearing. Those activists remained outside where their protest chants were loud enough to be heard from within. Varghese’s testimony created an opportunity to realign NYPIRG’s image and student control of the student activity fee by using student-citizen nomos.

Varghese notes, numerous times, how NYPIRG’s funding system was thoroughly reviewed and upheld by the federal courts and is “the most constitutionally sound system” (“Testimony” 2). Additionally, Varghese continues to use a tactic similar to that used in the

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NYPIRG memo by digging into the “inexplicable” and “conspicuous” justification for the changes. Creating a narrative of these recommendations as biased and unjust, Varghese frames the General Counsel’s actions as “an effort to eliminate funding for a successful and outspoken student organization that [GC Martinez] apparently disagrees with” (“Testimony” 3). This rhetoric supports a narrative portraying NYPIRG as a successful, vocal student organization that is being attacked by the politically and personally motivated interests of the General Counsel. Varghese emphasizes this by stating the new bylaws have “the effect of silencing NYPIRG’s students’ speech because someone doesn’t like it” (“Testimony” 3, emphasis original).

The tactic of “calling out” the influence of outside interests is apparent in both the CUNY student activity fee movement and the FSM. In both cases, student activists employ a narrative of university administrators as failing to have the best interests of students and democracy at mind. Importantly, both movements rely on student unity to stop the expansion of administrative university power. In order to protect the funding that fuels NYPIRG’s existence on campus, Varghese utilizes Faber’s concept of image-power to create an interpretive story of change (Faber 122). In the testimony, change is centered around the identity of NYPIRG as a student organization that serves a useful role and around the General Counsel and Board of Trustees as politically motivated by the funding situation at CUNY as a whole. Critically, the testimony calls attention to the discrepancy in the claim that NYPIRG is an external organization by showcasing the identity of the organization as a democratic, student-led advocacy group that represents the underrepresented in CUNY’s system. Varghese states,

In addition, proposed amendments to Bylaw Article 16 provide that [student activity fee] cannot be used to fund a non-profit student group that is legally incorporated and considered, incorrectly, to be “outside” CUNY -- even if the group has a 100% student board of directors (and with a 45-year long relationship). According to the General Counsel’s comments in the student affairs committee, the only organization that she could think of that would be impacted by this move is NYPIRG. This shows again that she wants the Board to ignore First Amendment law (“Testimony” 2)

In this segment, Varghese focuses on the General Counsel rather than on the CUNY Board of Trustees as a whole. An image of the General Counsel as biased and mendacious is crafted throughout this testimony through the use of highly suggestive language. This tactic creates discordance with the Board’s narrative and the image of the General Counsel, thus further supporting the nomoi of student citizens and the university as a place for discourse. The references to NYPIRG’s history with CUNY are made to support the student identity of the organization. Additionally, Varghese questions the role and motives of the Board, stating,

You are the trustees of one of the largest urban and most important public university systems in the world. A recognized student-directed organization with a four decades long relationship gets targeted and you are denied easy access to relevant information that undermines the credibility of that attack. You must not agree. This is not the due diligence standard for civic engagement that you should be modeling for more than a quarter million CUNY students (“Testimony” 3).

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This direct “call-out” not only creates an image of the Board as being fooled by biased information but also relies on the nomos of student citizens to criticize the proposed changes. Varghese emphasizes the extent of power the Board of Directors has over CUNY by mentioning the quarter million students enrolled in CUNY. Additionally, Varghese works to show the importance of NYPIRG and the stakes in this decision when she states,

I am a college student in CUNY, a system that celebrates excellence, diversity, and knowledge. This is the United States of America. My family emigrated here due to this nation’s foundation of freedom. I am a young person at a time when young voices are rising up to hold leaders accountable and point in a different direction. This proposal appears to be nothing more than a political attack, one that would be expected in other nations, but must not be tolerated here (“Testimony” 3)

With the mention of a political attack, Varghese associates the acceptance of these changes with undemocratic values. This adds to the narrative of hegemonic interests as working against the values of CUNY and the nomos of democracy. Basically, it indicates a betrayal of students at the most personal and political level. Given the history of Governor Cuomo’s budget funding proposals, it comes as no surprise that other organizations who rely on speech activities would speak out against neoliberal values penetrating the university and attempting to remove the nomoi of student citizens and the university as a place for discourse.

The circulation of the nomoi of the movement increased following the public hearing. The tactics of resistance used by Varghese, namely the use of a narrative prioritizing the student citizen nomos, were also employed by other CUNY students, organizations, and stakeholders fearful of the implications of removing the student referenda and funding for speech activities. These various stakeholders adapt the narrative used by Varghese to their own particular concerns and emphasize the nomoi of student citizens and the university as a place of critical discourse. NYPIRG’s narrative created an identity that could be used by other activists in different counterpublics. Some of the organizations in coalition with NYPIRG were the CUNY Rising Alliance, the Professional Staff Congress, and CUNY University Student Senate. Individuals outside of NYPIRG connected with the organization based on their personal values of democracy and free speech–– based on shared nomoi.

For instance, the student newspaper at CUNY City College of New York published an article about the student activity fee movement and quoted University Student Senate member Harris Khan as saying, “These fees are created for student activities […] We decide on these fees through a process which includes a student-wide referenda that engages the entire community. The Board of Trustees have basically spent the last 6 months trying to take away our rights to decide where our money will go” (De Leon & Kaur). In stating that the Board of Trustees is “trying to take away” the rights of CUNY students, Khan brings attention to the fundamental narrative of students as democratic citizens and relates it with the student as consumer nomos under a neoliberal system--emphasizing students’ rights to decide how to spend their money. Likewise, in an article from the Clarion, published by the Professional Staff Congress, CUNY student and editor-in-chief of The Campus at City College, Anthony Viola, uses NYPIRG’s narrative as a lens for critiquing the anti-democratic impact the same changes could have for student publications across CUNY. He asks, “If the student government does something corrupt

29 and a campus paper exposes it, what is going to stop the student government from saying, ‘We’re going to decrease your funding?’” (Ahmad). Another statement, from the University Student Senate Vice Chair for Graduate Affairs, Cyrille Njikeng, is reported as saying, “It is clear to me and everyone at CUNY that the proposed changes to the Student Activity Fee are a threat to CUNY students right to organize and self-govern” (“Rally Press Release”). State Senator Gustavo Rivera supported student activists by emphasizing CUNY’s commitment to growth and “civic engagement and social consciousness as well” (“Rally Press Release”). Senator Rivera also contends that the state government and CUNY should be “encouraging [our] students to speak out and vote, instead of trying to silence them” (“Rally Press Release”). These statements focus on the adverse effect an administration-controlled activity fee would have on the nomoi of students as citizens and university as a space for critical discourse. Viola’s comment, in particular, calls attention to the political consequences of restricting student control of the student activity fee.

Corrine Greene, Brooklyn College student and member of the CUNY Rising Alliance, identifies the administration’s strategy by making connections to political gain, marginalization, and authoritarianism. She states,

Under Governor Cuomo CUNY has experienced massive disinvestment leading to increasing drop-out rates and more students in debt. Student governments, NYPIRG, and student media have been some of the most vocal opponents of those cuts and are now facing a complete loss of funding and draconian restrictions on their ability to organize. It is clear that Governor Cuomo has instructed the CUNY Board of Trustees to go after those who disagree with him… we stand in solidarity with students facing this unprecedented attack on their free speech and right to organize– and we demand that the student activity fee be left under full student control (“Rally Press News”).

Bringing up the “disinvestment” that led to increased drop-out rates demonstrates some of the reasoning for NYPIRG and other’s resistance to the neoliberal university model. Greene’s comments illustrate the State’s concern with working with private interests instead of with students and educators. In a way, the rhetoric of the later-part of the student activity fee movement creates a fear of authoritarian-restrictions on student control of funding for speech by highlighting the political implications of the proposal. Discussing the political implications, Varghese commented “NYPIRG is being singled out because we’re effective. We are a student- run organization that works for the public– not private– interest… This semester alone we sent hundreds of students and faculty from all across the state to Albany to tell legislators that Cuomo’s proposed budget would negatively impact CUNY students'' (Ahmad). The article further states that Varghese, along with other students who talked to Clarion “think the proposed changes come from Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office and are aimed at punishing NYPIRG for advocating for college affordability and adequate funding for public higher education” (Ahmad). These comments reveal the shift student speech issues have taken since the time of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement; now, student activists have the historical tools needed to identify hegemonic power and draw connections between the counterpublics that neoliberalism would rather keep concealed.

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On May 1, 2018, Attorney General of New York, Eric T. Schneiderman responded to a request for legal opinion sent by a student member of the Board of Trustee, John Aderounmu, which sought a legal response to the issue raised by CUNY General Counsel Martinez. The Attorney General responded in favor of protecting the referenda process and denied any legal requirement the Board of Trustees has to investigate funding allocation practices to outside student organizations (“OAG Response”). Moreover, the Attorney General appeared to support NYPIRG’s claim that General Counsel Martinez purposely mislead the CUNY Board of Trustees, stating, “to the extent that CUNY’s Board chooses, in its fiduciary capabilities, to amend Bylaw § 16.6 or other Bylaws governing the manner in which such organizations are funded it does so at its own discretion, rather than at the behest of the [Office of the Attorney General] or in response to the [Queens College Students for Life] settlement” (“OAG Response”). Importantly, this response verifies NYPIRG’s claim that there was no precedent to review funding practices at CUNY and that, instead, the proposed changes to funding outside registered student organizations (like NYPIRG) were made independent of outside legal consultation with the State. After the Attorney General’s response was circulated, on May 9, 2018, the Board of Trustees rejected the proposed changes and the chair, Bill Thompson, promised a new plan would remove the risk of student groups losing existing funding (Jordan & Kadirgamar).

In the end, NYPIRG’s tactics of resistance were successful because they created a collective identity other groups could connect with by developing alternative narratives about the issue. Many of the tactics used in the CUNY student activity fee movement, like exposing external private interests in education, the use of nomoi of students as citizens and the university as a place of critical debate, find their roots in the FSM. That being said, there are some important differences in the tactics used in the CUNY issue–– the most important being the use of consumer-based rhetoric. While the FSM created an image of students as workers, the resistance in the CUNY student activity fee movement critically frames students as consumers who have the right to determine proper use of their funding without paternalistic oversight. Additionally, the contemporary issue signifies an important shift in student activism: the ability to use legal proceedings to circulate counterdiscourses and resist authoritative restrictions.

Conclusion

In both the Free Speech Movement and the CUNY Student Activity Fee Movement, activists relied on rhetoric that frames them as citizens, and which values the university as an important discursive arena. Universities should be free from the pressure of outside interests and universities should be a place that connects various segments of the public sphere in liberatory democratic practices; however, until universities move beyond neoliberal frameworks and mandates, outside interests will continue attempts to impose their will on university policies. Whether by directly censoring student speech or by restricting student control of funding for organizations, universities attempt to limit student’s ability to participate in democratic deliberation. Based on an analysis of student activist rhetoric in two different times and places, this thesis calls for additional institutional support for student participation in critical debate. Instead of shielding students from viewpoints they or outside interests may disagree with, universities should be promoting the investigation of societal issues and act as a place of

31 intellectual discussion–– becoming a place that truly encourages critical thought and equitable civic participation. Universities should remove place-based restrictions on student speech activities and, instead, encourage more students to participate in speech activities by increasing access to the resources that make activism possible.

From this study, student activists and Composition & Rhetoric scholars can learn how to combat inevitable hegemonic challenges to their freedoms and can learn how to use shared contextual values to resist oppressive, discriminatory restrictions to speech activities. Inside the university itself, Composition & Rhetoric scholars should collaborate with student groups and faculty unions as much as possible. For instance, working with unions could lead to better pay for adjunct faculty and working with graduate student groups could help them advocate for additional funding or resources. Scholars could also work with groups that have connections to the local community and engage in activism regarding student civic involvement, local environmental concerns, and many more. Additionally, the use of a nomos-centered framework for rhetorical analysis can help activists illustrate the collective importance of particular issues and can unite various counterpublics. It can also serve as a tool for collaboration and coalition- building with other affected groups and, therefore, serve as a counterhegemonic tactic to use against neoliberal threats to equity and justice.

Students and instructors alike need to recognize the critical importance of deliberative knowledge building in order to achieve a more just democracy. We need to consider why an issue arises at a particular moment and what the potential ideological influences could be. Students, scholars, and activists alike should engage questions like: Who are the stakeholders implicated in this rhetoric? What are the historical tactics of resistance involved in this issue? Does the rhetoric have any implications for democracy? Activists need to understand the histories in which they are situated so that they can adapt previously effective rhetorical tactics of resistance to new contexts. Specifically, activist rhetors should be paying attention to the histories that play a role in shaping public values by considering different nomoi.

The nomos-centered framework I present here could also be used to analyze other social movements and acts of resistance focusing issues of class, disability, gender, and race to expand the range of literature already present in the field. If time for this thesis was unlimited, I would have loved to investigate other grassroots movements who also resist neoliberal policies. For instance, there were student protests at CUNY in the fall of 2018, when Governor Cuomo announced Amazon had approval from New York State and City to build their second headquarters in Queens. Students voiced their opposition to government subsidies for Amazon in the face of persistent defunding for higher education. Critiquing CUNY administration for voicing support for the Amazon project, one petition discusses the negative impact more neoliberal policies could have on CUNY students. It states,

CUNY administration thinks it's okay for the State and City to invest $3 billion in Amazon while students struggle to pay tuition, graduate on time, make it to class on time because of a crumbling public transportation system, struggle with secure housing situations, are targeted and/or in fear of ICE, etc. CUNY administration thinks it's okay that tax-payer money goes towards funding a helipad for the richest person in the world instead of CUNY. CUNY administration thinks it's okay to support and send students

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into a company that exploits its workers and helps ICE, police, and law enforcement to identify and surveil people and develop facial recognition technology rather than genuinely seeking to protect and support undocumented students. We refuse to stand by and allow the University to do this (Hunter)

Pointing out the disproportionate impact the company would have on working-class people and people of color, who constitute a majority of CUNY students, introduces different nomoi of democracy, justice, and the role of the university that need to be rhetorically investigated. The obvious connection to neoliberal strategies of censorship in this issue can be used as an example for other scholars looking to research social movements with similar concerns.

Additionally, it would be fruitful to interview individual activists involved in the CUNY student activity fee movement, and the resistance to Amazon, because students could provide multiple narratives about the same topic. Examining the use of narrative in social justice, Jones and Walton (2019) argue for the use of multiple narratives to foster critical thinking, they contend, “[narrative] is an excellent way to engage students in exploration and investigation… [which] are necessary for people to write to change communities'' (258). By supporting ethical reasoning, narratives can help highlight the connections between powerful actors and the range of people potentially affected by their actions (Jones & Walton 248). Conducting interviews with student activists or even studying student use of social media for speech activism, could reveal additional tactics of resisting censorship that focus on identity and story-telling–– tactics that use narrative to create meaning. Social media use opposing neoliberalism has the potential to show the impact of hashtags and/or images in expanding dissent through collective identity-making. At the same time, social media also feeds into neoliberal practices because of the lack of data privacy options available for users. Even more so, examining the circulation of discourse made by social media could add to a range of methodological and theoretical research for studying publics and social movements, extending the work of Edwards & Lang (2018), Gries (2013), Dadas (2016), Sackey, DeVoss, & Ridolfo (2018), Bonilla & Rosa (2015), and Williams (2018). Specifically, Bonilla & Rosa contend social media platforms, like Twitter, “offer sites for collectively constructing counternarratives and reimagining group identities” (6). Edward & Lang further this idea in “Entanglements That Matter: A New Materialist Trace of #YesAllWomen,” by tracing the circulation and emotional affect of hashtags under a new materialist framework, where hashtags are actors in their own right (4). Such a framework could provide insight as to how hashtags resisting neoliberal policies circulate and how different counterpublics can use them to achieve different means.

Student-led activist movements like the Free Speech Movement and the CUNY Student Activity Fee Movement represent important cultural knowledge production that centers on encouraging democratic participation at the university level. As instructors in Composition and Rhetoric, we need to recognize the potential we have to participate in transforming the modern university by directly supporting faculty and graduate student unions and student advocacy groups through our classrooms and assignments. First-year composition courses should actively introduce students to the nomoi of students as citizens and encourage them to participate in issues that affect them on a personal level by engaging in research that reveals an array of narratives that highlight the concerns of marginalized groups. As a field, we have a tendency to critique institutions and do little to improve the actually existing conditions. I believe that if

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Composition and Rhetoric scholars pay closer attention to collective knowledge-making in the classroom, then student movements resisting neoliberal policies could be more prepared to tackle strategies of institutional censorship. Centering our research on participation and justice could bring wider departmental change in the form of new classroom curriculums and learning values. As instructors, we are partly responsible for shaping the next generation of citizens, and we need to provide them with the tools they need to dismantle oppressive structures of power on a grassroots level.

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