After Changes to Swarthmore Student Handbook, ACLU and Faculty Raise Alarm

Correction: An initial typo said Swarthmore has suspended the most students, instead of charged the most students. No students have been suspended at this time and charges are still ongoing.

This year’s changes to Swarthmore College’s Student Code of Conduct mark an unprecedented departure in how the administration responds to student protests. The overhaul could significantly alter how the college is allowed to sanction and restrict student speech. Edits include new examples that specify what qualifies as excessive noise during protests, such as bullhorns and chanting; language explicitly banning encampments; and requirements for “prior authorization” for projections and “other public displays.” Changes to “Student Conduct Policies and Procedures” also include two new sanction types: interim campus exclusion and interim class exclusion that could occur prior to formal hearings at the sole discretion of Vice President for Student Affairs Stephanie Ives “or designee.” A sanction type called interim suspension previously existed, but it is a more severe measure than exclusion, Ives said in an email to The Phoenix. The addition of campus and classroom exclusion gives the College more intermediate sanction options. Side-by-side comparisons of the different versions, obtained by The Phoenix from Sociology and Anthropology Department Chair Christy Scheutze, highlight the scope of this year’s changes: paragraph-length sections deleted or added, forming the landscape of a new campus conduct enforcement system.

With the addition of interim campus and classroom exclusions, students could be banned from campus or the classroom without a hearing until the end of the conduct process, which, for some students, has taken months. Schuetz said faculty were told in a meeting on Sep. 11 that changes to the handbook are normal procedure, which is why they were not consulted about the changes until an email released Aug. 27 to students and forwarded to faculty. In a clarifying email to The Phoenix, Ives quotes herself in the meeting recording as saying, “We review the student handbook annually, every single year. Every year there are changes.” Faculty are not involved in edits, which fall to the division of student affairs. 

However, Schuetze says the dramatic changes combined with lack of prior consultation and inclusion has raised faculty concerns: “Our concern as faculty is that this is an unprecedented level of change accompanied by an unprecedented punitive turn in the treatment of activism on campus. Students are being charged with violations of the Code of Conduct for protest activity on campus, as far as we’re aware, for the very first time.”

Student protestors at Swarthmore are being charged for their participation in dissent between October 2023 and March 2024 through 28 ongoing conduct cases. Out of those charged, at least twenty are students of color, according to faculty case managers directly involved in the disciplinary proceedings. Additional students, including those involved later in the April encampment, may be charged after further investigation, which Ives acknowledged in her Sep. 17 letter: “If additional evidence becomes available that identifies other potential respondents, the College reserves the right to issue additional charges.”

In 2019, following protests against sexual assault in Swarthmore’s fraternities, James Terhune, previous vice president for student affairs, announced the college would not charge students for clear violations of policy because those policies were not properly communicated and had not been upheld in the past. While they committed to upholding policies regularly in the future, the announcement also went on to add: “but in directing too much attention to rules and enforcement, we risk missing the larger point: Building a better, more inclusive, caring, and just world begins here.”

Referencing Terhune’s statement in an email sent to faculty on Sep. 17, Ives said, “By [Terhune] issuing this unequivocal statement to our community, the College made clear that it would consistently hold students accountable for serious policy violations in the future. [Terhune’s] statement was made without regard to the identities or viewpoints of any students.”

In an email to The Phoenix, Ives clarified,  “At no point did I say that students in the past should have been suspended. What I did say was ‘While Swarthmore may not always have held students accountable for violations in the service of protest activity, perhaps there were incidents in the past where we should have, because we do have the right, as a community, to describe the time, place, and manner in which protests can occur as well as the ways that it can’t’”. 

Jonathan Washington, associate professor of linguistics and a member of Swarthmore’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors — which has been internally discussing the changes — says while the faculty agree that students harming others should be sanctioned, the ongoing charges do not reflect a level of harm he feels justifies sanctions. The ongoing cases are for violations of last year’s 2023-24 student handbook, a detail that was confirmed by Ives in an email sent to faculty, but Washington has had trouble separating this year’s punitive changes from how ongoing charges will be resolved. 

“I think most faculty would agree that if a student is doing something that’s harmful to someone, that needs to be adjudicated fairly,” Washington said. “But what they’re doing now is completely different. They’re saying, ‘no, we’re just going to throw the book at students anytime anyone complains.’” He continued, “I don’t know where they are causing harm by sitting on the carpet in Parrish. Maybe they wear the carpet down a little. Yes, some other students may have felt uncomfortable by some of the things being said. But that’s just normal. In protest, people are going to feel uncomfortable, but that’s not harmful. That’s challenging people’s thinking, which is the whole point of protest.”

Ives told The Phoenix that there was physical harm related to the two major charges, and that they involved levels of “physical harm serious enough to require medical attention.” Despite the unprecedented nature of the charges, she denies the school is significantly changing their response to peaceful student protests, and instead is clarifying existing policy based on last year’s events: “Necessary revisions and clarifications this year focused on time, place, and manner requirements to clarify existing policy based on experiences from last year and requests for clarification from students. For instance, for many years, the code description for Disorderly Conduct has listed “excessive noise” as prohibited conduct when it interferes with campus functions and activities. The 2024-25 updates now include examples to help students understand behavior that becomes prohibited when it disrupts campus and community operations, classes, or activities. None of the 2024-25 updates prevent students from engaging in peaceful protests.”

“While Swarthmore may not always have held students accountable for violations in the service of protest activity, perhaps there were incidents in the past where we should have, because we do have the right, as a community, to describe the time, place, and manner in which protests can occur as well as the ways that it can’t.”

Stephanie Ives

After speaking with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter leaders at other schools, Swarthmore SJP members Ragad Ahmad ’26 and Kaliab Tale ’26 found that Swarthmore has charged the most students as a percentage of total student body out of fourteen comparable institutions, including Haverford College and Bryn Mawr College. Swarthmore denied this alleged finding in Ives’s letter to faculty case managers after they brought it to her attention in a separate letter.

Solomon Furious Worlds, an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney based in Philadelphia, sees differences in how policies are being changed and upheld for pro-Palestinian protestors as more indicative of how the content of speech changes enforcement, and how political pressure from congressional investigations is shaping schools’ reactions. They describe this as a “trickle-down fear.” Historically, they also note that past encampments led by white organizers were met with less resistance, and Worlds now sees harsher sanctions for Black and Palestinian organizers. 

Worlds has also seen instances of white protestors being prosecuted less for their involvement, and examples of racial profiling of students who were not at protests but charged regardless. Swarthmore’s SJP chapter, which has led the protest and larger pro-Palestine movement on campus, has also alleged Swarthmore racially targeted students by claiming they were at protests when they were not. Ives denied this in the letter written in response to faculty case managers. 

In response to the interim campus and class exclusion policy, Worlds says it has dangerous implications for due process, the legal principle that punishment should follow only after formal proceedings and inquiry. Under the new rules, students could be effectively suspended and lose access to their housing without warning or opportunity to present a defense. They would also have little legal recourse as long as Swarthmore followed its own policies.

“[Administrators] want to publicize the law,” Worlds said. “They want people to read it and be scared. This is an attempt to silence the people and chill speech. This is the college telling students to shut up, to stop talking about it… Especially to stop worrying in an excessively noisy way or with an encampment. That’s what this is. And the way they’re doing so is wildly antithetical to the mission of colleges and universities.”

Washington similarly sees the changes as a concerning indication of Swarthmore’s views on peaceful protest. Faculty raised questions at meetings about why Swarthmore is making these edits that Washington and Schuetze see as a cultural shift for the College, but felt unheard. Washington shared that at the meeting on the Sep. 11, which was a special meeting called by seventeen faculty members, Ives held the microphone longer than any faculty member to defend the college’s position. He says he has felt the tone from Ives and Nathan Miller, director of student conduct, to be “I’m right and you’re wrong, so shut up”.  

Last year, groups of faculty showed support towards students, including a letter published in The Phoenix signed by 136 members of the faculty and staff. Facing a lack of clarity regarding Swarthmore’s response to the encampment and worrying because police were called at other colleges, Washington said: “Some of us had notifications on our phone turned on at night time so that we could receive calls if that were to happen, and maybe put ourselves between police and students, or whatever else they wanted or would be comfortable with us doing to support them.”

Schuetze says she is disappointed in Swarthmore’s changing treatment of student protest  in the face of national congressional and media pressures colleges and universities are facing. She highlighted how this change contrasts with the college’s Quaker roots, pointing to Swarthmore’s website articles celebrating student protest and the importance of student free speech for the school’s values. She said many of the changes mirror those highlighted at recent professional conferences for student affairs professionals or for higher education trustees, such as the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, but argues Swarthmore should not always be following other institutions. However, without pressure from faculty and students, she doesn’t see the administration changing course. 

“What we’re seeing is, in one year, a very dramatic shift in the culture. We need to correct course quickly before this gets into a situation that we don’t want to have. As a Quaker institution, I and many faculty members, have understood this place to be unique in terms of the degree to which faculty are involved in governance, and in terms of the degree to which social justice, civil disobedience, engagement, and actions to bring about real change in the world and call out injustices are centered as part of the mission of the institution.”