Jonathan Suarez | Editor in Chief
Last spring, I sat in one of the classrooms tucked into the second floor of FIU Law, alongside other second- and third-year law students, taking First Amendment Law with Professor Thomas Baker. We read Supreme Court decisions defending the right to express unpopular thoughts and participate in what the Court has called America’s “marketplace of ideas.”
That phrase can feel abstract in a law school classroom. It sounds like doctrine, something to underline in a casebook before moving on to the next case. But it becomes much less abstract when the university where you study that doctrine charges students for engaging in silent political protest only a few yards away.
On March 13, a group of students stood up during a fireside chat with University President Jeanette Nuñez and MLB player Alex Rodriguez. They revealed shirts that read “ICE OFF FIU.” Then, they walked out.
The students did not shout. They did not block any exits. Nobody chanted “Hey hey ho ho, President Nuñez has got to go,” or “Yankees suck.” It lasted three to five minutes. The speakers never stopped talking.
Three months later, six of them were found responsible for violating the FIU Student Conduct and Honor Code.
FIU’s conduct code says the First Amendment protects expressive activities. The conduct code also bans them inside every university building.
I wasn’t in the auditorium that day. But I go to this school. I’m bound by the same conduct code every student here is. And I’ve spent the last few months watching FIU selectively enforce it.
The problem is the way the code is written. The indoor ban doesn’t require an actual disruption to classes or school activities, or an intent to disrupt. It bans indoor protests flatly and completely. Would students wearing shirts about the lack of parking or malfunctioning elevators face the same hearing? Under this code, the answer is…maybe? The code is so broad that FIU doesn’t need to prove anything was disrupted; it just needs to decide your shirt was a protest.
The policy, as it stands, turns a constitutional right into something students can only do with permission. Protest, outside. March, outside. Perform thy “expressive activities,” outside. If the Miami sun at noon isn’t enough to silence you, maybe the fear of prosecution will.
This policy is newer than it looks. Before 2024, indoor demonstrations were prohibited unless the VP of Student Affairs granted written permission. It was more of a case-by-case judgment call. Then came the spring of 2024. Students at FIU, UF, FSU, and USF were mounting Gaza-war encampments and indoor sit-ins.The flat indoor ban appeared at FIU in May of that year.
This makes the rule appear reactionary— as if built for one protest movement. It is now being used against another. The 2024 amendment removed the possibility of a case-by-case approval entirely. The ban is now total and complete.
The Supreme Court settled this in 1965. Iowa students wore black armbands to protest Vietnam. Schools cannot punish students for expression unless it substantially disrupts the learning environment. That’s Tinker v. Des Moines. I read it last spring, a few yards from where this happened.
Jehnny Rivera, FIU’s executive director of the Office of University Protocol, Ceremonies, and Events, confirmed the students stood for “approximately three to five minutes,” adding that the speakers continued uninterrupted and no attendees complained.
Tania Cepero Lopez, an assistant teaching professor in the English department, was in the auditorium that day. She testified at the hearing. The students were silent, she said. No one told them to leave. They walked out on their own.
Some will say FIU has the right to control what happens inside its own buildings. That the university and students have an interest in keeping indoor spaces free from disruption. My response is simple: they absolutely do. If these students threw tomatoes at Nuñez or blocked doors of students trying to go home, then the school has every right to stop them. But that argument requires an actual disruption to justify itself.
More importantly, we don’t need a law that explicitly says we can express our ideas indoors. That right is inherent. It’s FIU’s job to justify restrictions on speech narrowly and specifically. That’s why it makes sense for it to be illegal to yell bomb on a plane, but it’s perfectly legal — if imprudent — to tell your film professor you just don’t like Citizen Kane.
Then-Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez once said that “many of our constituents know the dangers of being silenced or have been silenced themselves under communist rule.” It’s disappointing to see a public university in the state she governed — one she now leads — do some silencing themselves.
The university should be embarrassed that these students were charged and found responsible for violating the FIU Student Conduct and Honor Code. It should rewrite an indoor ban that is too broad. The drafters of the new code would do well to remember what master’s student Norma Huembes said at a free speech symposium hosted by this university weeks after the fireside chat: “Free speech should not be taken as courage or being brave: it should be a right.”
You don’t have to charge every student who protests to silence a campus. You just have to charge enough of them. At the worst possible time. And then let everyone else decide whether speaking up here is worth it.
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The opinions presented on this page do not represent the views of the PantherNOW Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect the perspectives of contributing writers and/or university community members.
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