Punished for Leafletting on a Public Sidewalk

Emerson has put four students on College Probation for leafleting on a public sidewalk. The action that resulted in probation took place on March 7 in front of the Paramount Center building, where the students distributed what they describe as educational material about Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974. Meir was the subject of the play Golda’s Balcony, then playing at the Paramount. Three students involved in the action were put on probation for one semester. The fourth student is on probation for the entire 2024-25 academic year.

The original disciplinary charges included disorderly conduct and disruptive behavior; failure to comply with directions of college officials; false identification or information; misuse of the name, image, likeness, or creative work of another person or entity; vandalism and property damage. Later, the charge of vandalism was replaced with violation of the college’s posting policy.

None of these charges conforms with the students’ accounts of the events. According to them, they were handing out leaflets on the sidewalk when an ECPD officer approached them. “We were told we had to move away from the building,” recalled one of the students involved in the action, who asked not to be identified. The students complied with the order and moved down the street, where they continued leafleting. The same officer then returned and confiscated their material. At no moment were the students inside the Paramount Center building. ECPD reported that they were leaning against the doors of the building, but surveillance footage of the action failed to corroborate the report. “The administration told us they didn’t need definitive evidence in order to penalize us,” continued the student. “They didn’t need to be 100% sure.” According to its own Findings & Sanctions webpage, Emerson relies on a “preponderance of the evidence standard” to determine responsibility for any alleged violation of its policies. It defines preponderance of evidence simply as “more likely than not” based solely on their own assessment.

Although the original charges were issued on March 20, the administration waited until the summer, when most students and faculty were away from campus, to put the students on probation. On July 21, more than four months after the action outside the Paramount, the students were called for administrative hearings, in which they met with a member of the Office of Community Standards, allegedly to investigate the reported incident and come to a resolution. For some, the outcome of the hearings looked like a foregone conclusion. “The hearings were not designed to give students an opportunity to defend themselves. The goal was not to determine what happened in front of the Paramount but to extract information about how we organize and how we communicate with each other,” explained a second student put on probation.

“I was able to expose incongruities in the charges or prove them entirely false, but nothing changed the outcome.”

Putting students on College Probation impacts their lives in multiple ways. Probation puts them on notice that further discipline can result in suspension or expulsion. Employers at Emerson run background checks on students and can refuse work-study jobs to those on probation. This usually makes them ineligible to serve as RA’s and orientation leaders, and from participating in programs at ELA or Kasteel Well. Probation can also have visa implications for international students and affect financial aid for lower income students. Ultimately, it has a chilling effect, discouraging community members from organizing and inhibiting political discourse on campus.

Sarah Edrie is the kind of alum Emerson loves. A whirlwind on the local arts scene, the 1995 WLP graduate served on Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston arts councils, worked with Arts Boston, co-produced a movie debut at Bright Lights, worked on First Night at A.R.T, and had a stage role in the art-music production of Army of Broken Toys for 15 years.

She often collaborated with Emerson panels, produced Black Box shows with students, brought speakers to classes, and was scheduled to talk to an upcoming arts-econ class. She has given money to the college every year since graduating. Not now. “I won’t be doing any Emerson things,” said Edrie in an interview last week.

Edrie has joined more than 200 Emerson alumni who say they are refusing to give money or time because of the college’s treatment of protesters last spring and its policies clamping down on demonstrations and free expression.

“What changed for me started with the protests and how they handled them,” Edrie said. The “punitive action” Emerson took in firing the outspoken head of Bright Lights and the discipline handed out to students cemented her decision, she said.

The call for an alumni boycott is being organized by a group that sprang up after the prominent online alumni group, the Emerson Mafia, banned discussion of the issue last May. Others established the group Emerson Alumni for Justice in Palestine on Facebook and Instagram, launching the call to boycott. Emerson Alumni launch boycott. The organizers say Emerson is now prohibiting the kinds of free speech and demonstrations they practiced openly as students.

“I was absolutely horrified” by the college’s protest policy, said Maria DiPasquale, who graduated in 2016 and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. At Emerson, she participated in protests for cultural competency, in protest of the police killing in Ferguson, Missouri, and in support of dining hall workers. “They were really important moments for my growth as a student, and it sounds like things that would not be allowed at Emerson now.

“Blaming the low enrollment on protesters is just absolutely false,” she said. “I think the kinds of folks who would be attracted to attend Emerson would be turned off by the administration’s action,” not by the protesters, she said.

Lissa Deonarain, a 2018 graduate who lives in Omaha, recalls organizing protests for the group POWER, for a more multicultural curriculum, and other causes. “We took over the dining hall, we were standing on stairs, chanting, leading demonstrations. We marched into the Faculty Assembly in the Bordy. We marched through buildings,” she recalled. “That was a promising time for me, when at least Emerson was allowing us to express ourselves.”

She said the call to boycott talks to classes, to sit on panels, to meet with students on campus is a way of demonstrating the value of the alumni network at Emerson.

“Alums don’t really donate a lot,” she acknowledged. “But what Emerson really loves to do is get alumni involved. We have power, and boycotts have proven to work.”