Red Star: A rule we ought to break

Tufts decided to require registration for all protests and demonstrations larger than 25 people. Rhetoric aside, this policy is clearly aimed at walkouts, mass demonstrations, picket lines and coordinated disruptions. They want to keep us safe from our freedom to demonstrate. How thoughtful.

The administrators have more power than the average student, including the power to punish protesters for violation of public safety. Unless your parent is a trustee, students have to organize collectively to exercise any power. Only through organized disruption can we have something resembling equal footing.

Disruption is the point of demonstration; it eliminates the power gap between institutions and the people who study at them, work for them and are policed by them. A demonstration which breaks no rules goes unheard. They don’t want to hear us.

The administration made this clear when they went after 33 members of Tufts Climate Action (TCA) after their 2015 sit-in. They made it clear when they failed to effectively address the targeted harassment of pro-Palestinian activists beyond mere words, and ignored the Tufts Community Union Senate resolution proposed by Tufts' Students for Justice in Palestine. They made it clear when Dean Solomont sneeringly dismissed those who protested Governor Baker’s policies, saying “I don’t think they did their homework.”

But Tufts says students are supposed “to make communities they are a part of more socially just.” But this rhetoric only means ‘study hard, work for non-profits and shake hands with congresspeople!’ That’s tolerable press. Playing on their terms is a losing game; speaking on their terms only wears your throat out. We already need to break the rules; one more won’t stop us.

They had to listen to TCA’s occupation, to the Tufts Labor Coalition and janitors’ march in 2016 and to the dining workers march this spring. Campaigns can only succeed when they target levers of power, which means physical disruption, press coverage, targeted campaigns against specific trustees, alumni businesses and policies. Our right to protest is not granted by the university; it is ours alone to exercise and determine. This policy, regardless of intent, will limit that right.

When universities manage dissent, they keep politics from evolving beyond endless arguments. They want us to be well-behaved children, to be seen by donors at civic dialogue events and grovel for jobs and scraps. Really though, we should be running the university ourselves in partnership with workers and faculty.

The problem with Tufts politics and discourse is that we have too little power. Structurally this will not change without a dramatic moment: a microcosm of a revolution. But we can build power slowly by breaking rule after rule, and by correctly identifying the spaces we need to control, the power sources to pressure and the coalitions to build in order to make them listen to us.

The school's power operates through rising costs, tiered housing and rules on protests. It operates through unmarked cop cars, opaque financial aid and the rigid solidarity of the Board of Trustees. Our power cannot work through words alone. We need to level the playing field; we need to shatter their rules.