Rutgers University has instituted a broad array of measures designed to keep student protests from disrupting campus life, including resident assistant training and establishing guidelines for protests.
The measures come in the wake of the previous year’s protests by pro-Palestinian activists, which resulted in the university suspending Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for this academic year. The organization had been suspended for a month in December for disruptions of classes, a program, meals, students studying, and vandalism occurring at the Rutgers Business School while an organization event was taking place. SJP was placed on probation for the remainder of the year for its violations of the university’s code of conduct.
In May the university ordered an encampment, which had been on Voorhees Mall for four days, be taken down after word was received that students planned to disrupt finals, forcing the cancellation of a number of them and resulting in July’s action against SJP.
During the suspension, which runs until at least July 25, 2025, SJP will not be recognized by Rutgers and can’t reserve rooms, participate in campus activities, join intramural sports or serve on councils.
Students at Rutgers, whose more than 7,000 Jewish students is one of the largest Jewish student populations in the nation, have previously told The Jewish Link they had faced antisemitic harassment during the previous year.
However, this year the university has moved to preemptively tamp down disruptive protests. Indeed, Hillel CEO Lisa Harris Glass described the university administration as being “on it.”
One of the steps being taken was requiring all resident assistants (RAs) to participate in a virtual training conducted August 20 by Right to Be, a global nonprofit dedicated to “ending harassment in all its forms,” which was facilitated by the Department of Residence Life, according to university spokesperson Megan Florance Schumann.
Resident assistants, residence life staff and staff from the Offices of the Dean of Students also attended the session, “Bystander Intervention to Stop Antisemitic, Xenophobic, and Islamophobic Harassment,” to equip participants with techniques for bystander intervention, which Florance Schumann said “are essential to the role of an RA and in other campus roles.”
“Following the session, RAs and university staff discussed and reflected on the training content,” she said.
On its website, Right to Be said the session focuses on the “types of disrespect that Jews and Muslims as well as those who are perceived to be Jewish and Muslim are facing right now—from microaggressions to violence—using a tool we call the ‘spectrum of disrespect,’” to learn the positive impact bystander intervention can have on individuals and communities.
The session uses five intervention strategies—distract, delegate, document, delay and direct—and how to prioritize personal safety while intervening.
However, on its Instagram page SJP complained that “Rutgers subjects RAs to mandatory trainings using flawed and oppressive definition of antisemitism” and that the definition is “one that is predicated on the permanent subjugation of Palestinians.”
SJP has also launched a campaign aimed at Rutgers New Brunswick Chancellor Dr. Francine Conway to name the proposed Arab cultural center after Refaat Alareer, a writer and professor of comparative literature at the Islamic University of Gaza killed in an Israeli airstrike, “to honor our martyr.”
Florance Schumann said a committee of faculty, staff and students is currently overseeing the center proposal, which is tasked with making recommendations for such aspects as its mission, physical space, staffing, naming and other priorities.
The university’s designated naming committee would recommend accepting or rejecting a proposed name to the university president and board of governors based on such considerations as space, program or position. Rutgers’ website notes the university “shall exercise judgment regarding the individual or entity the proposal is intended to honor” and approves those “aligned with its mission of education and scholarship, research, and service while advancing the common good.”
Rutgers has also recently posted guidelines on free expression on its website, applicable to “all members of our community,” including students, faculty, staff, visitors and external groups. They include articulating standards for tabling, flyers, chalking, fundraising, the use of signs and placards and other forms of promotion and engagement, identifying procedures for scheduling demonstrations as well as their time, place and manner to ensure they don’t interfere with education, research or business functions of the university and requiring those wishing to hold demonstrations or other public forums to submit a “Free Expression Notification Form,” and obtain a free expression permit. They must also define procedures for protesting a campus speaker and conditions under which protesters will be asked to leave and may be subject to penalties.
The guidelines lay out specific sites on both Rutgers-Newark and Camden, as well as the campuses in New Brunswick and Piscataway, where demonstrations can be held and limits them to between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Demonstrations must also not impede pedestrian, bicycle or vehicular transportation. Encampments and overnight demonstrations are prohibited.
The safety and well-being of our community is our top priority at Rutgers,” said Florance Schumann. “There has been and will be an increased security presence on campus, and as the academic year begins, students should be aware that campus safety resources are readily available to them.”
Debra Rubin has had a long career in journalism writing for secular weekly and daily newspapers and Jewish publications. She most recently served as Middlesex/Monmouth bureau chief for the New Jersey Jewish News. She also worked with the media at several nonprofits, including serving as assistant public relations director of HIAS and assistant director of media relations at Yeshiva University.
