In late February of this year, amidst nationwide protests against ICE, a group of six Seattle University students from Students Working Against Authoritarianism Together (SWAAT) were placed into an integrity formation group for putting up posters around campus. The posters enumerated a list of demands to the Seattle U administration regarding concerns about the response to ICE presence on campus as well as administration support for international and undocumented students. Flyers were taped in buildings and on structures like power line poles around campus.
The demands included an improved alert system in the case of ICE presence on campus, increased training for Public Safety officers in the event that ICE entered campus and clearer signage around what areas of campus are and are not open to the public. Students who taped up the posters said they wanted to create a safer and more supportive environment for international and undocumented students, and hoped that the school would support and adopt the demands.
“Having the school willing to do something and show its support definitely makes students feel that they are being supported by their administration,” Fourth-year Anthropology major Erik Hanhan, one of the students who put up posters, said. “We didn’t want to give or allow any reasons for students to feel unwelcome or unsafe coming onto campus. Students come here to learn, and the school had promised us in coming here that they would provide a safe space for students to learn and engage in social justice. We wanted them to hold true to their promises.”
Posters and flyers are a cheap, quick and easy way to advertise to a wide range of people. However, the content of those posters can’t be just anything, and they can’t go just anywhere. Posters must align with Seattle U policy on postering around campus.
According to Third-year Sociology major Ava Stubee, who posted flyers herself, the students who posted the flyers were unaware of the extent of the consequences they could face as a result of disobeying university policy on posters. However, she shared that she personally felt that the ideas expressed by the coalition who created the posters were worth bending the rules.
“I did know that following them would take time to get the posters approved and would require putting a specific name on the poster,” Stubee said. “I didn’t feel that any one student should have to be responsible for the demands made by a collective. Personally, I made the choice to not take the extra time because it felt like a matter of student safety.”
Within the week, every poster was taken down, except for a handful of more hidden ones.
“These postings were removed by Facilities and Department of Public Safety staff because they were not posted following our posting policies,” Anton Ward-Zanotto, dean of students, wrote in an email to The Spectator.
Ward-Zanotto wrote that he could not answer further questions as to not violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), but did share the university’s Postering and Advertising Policy as well as the expectation that any advertisement posted on campus align with Catholic and Jesuit ideals, values and teachings.
The students were identified via key card logs recorded at building entrances and security footage. Four of the six students who had put up flyers that night received an email notice for an Integrity Formation meeting, which are conducted by the dean and function as a disciplinary hearing.
According to Hanhan and Stubee, students were told during disciplinary meetings that they violated sections 2.28 (attempted or actual theft, damage, misuse or vandalism of university property) and 2.32 (violation of any other University policy, regulation or rule) of the Seattle U Student Handbook.
As a consequence for violating the policies, students were placed on disciplinary probation, a status that remains on a student’s academic record and must be disclosed to graduate schools in applications. After a request for an appeal was filed with a letter of support from multiple faculty, the disciplinary probation was dropped and student records were expunged. As a compromise, the five students completed a research project on student activism.
“All of us came out of [the project] feeling proud to be campus activists,” Stubee said. “That’s what we shared with the dean in our conversation with him, that we were proud to be part of campus activism.”
