Proposed posting policy up for review

UPDATE: The posting policy was made available for review at policies.eku.edu/comments on Thursday, April 2. It will be available until May 2.A policy change that would allow for unrestricted posting places on Eastern's campus is going online for review by the university community.

Eastern's Facilities Usage Committee voted to support a new draft of Eastern's posting policy, which would provide for unrestricted bulletin boards where anyone could post anything and remove the need for prior approval from Student Life.

The policy would also define other types of bulletin boards, including departmental, building and campus information boards.

"It's been a pretty cumbersome process," said Colin Reusch, one of the students serving on the Free Speech Sub-Committee that created the new policy draft. "We had to jump through a few more hoops than we expected."

Reusch said the policy on policies, which was created about halfway through the subcommittee's work on the posting policy, added new steps and processes that had to be accounted for.

One of the new requirements is that the posting policy be available online for 30 days so members of the Eastern community can read it and offer their feedback.

Facilities Usage Co-Chair Virginia Underwood said posting the policy online will help students, faculty and staff to understand what are acceptable posting places and what aren't.

Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Mike Reagle, who cast the only no vote against the policy, said he believed it contradicts the current free speech policy, which only provides for two free speech zones on campus - Powell Plaza and the Ravine.

"This goes in contrary to that policy," he said. "This says that you can post stuff wherever there are locations. Previous policy has said we're going to limit it to here and here."

Reagle said it would be better to wait until a new over-arching free speech policy is created that a new posting policy could mesh better with.

Reusch responded that free speech zones are a different issue than the posting policy, since the free speech zones are designed for public gatherings.

Underwood said she doesn't expect any conflicts between the policies.

"If we were continuing to work on one broad policy, this would have been a part of it," she said.

Director of Capital Planning James Street questioned whether someone could stand in front of an unrestricted posting place and claim they were in a designated public forum - which would conflict with the free speech policy.

Reusch said the new policy does not designate the space around posting places as public forums, only the posting places themselves.

Other concerns raised in the committee meeting were how responsibility for posting places would be assigned and whether there needed to be an extra clause defining specifically what are not acceptable posting places.

Reusch said much of the responsibility for the different kinds of bulletin boards will be intuitive - a department will be responsible for a board it puts up outside its office, faculty members will be responsible for boards they put up outside their offices and so on.

As for maintaining more public bulletin boards, Reusch said those tend to be self-maintaining because people take down old information to make space for new information.

"Bulletin boards by nature are sort of chaotic," he said.

Reusch said if the new posting policy becomes official, he hopes departments and campus organizations will be open to adding unrestricted bulletin boards when students ask for them.

While the policy was approved for online review Monday, and it was posted for review on Thursday, April 2, meaning the 30-day review period ends May 2. The policy can be read at policies.eku.edu/comments

Once the policy has been posted on policies.eku.edu for 30 days, Administrative Council will review the feedback and either tell the Free Speech Sub-Committee to incorporate suggestions into a revision or send the policy ahead to President Doug Whitlock.

If Whitlock approves, the final step is approval from the Board of Regents. The next Board of Regents quarterly meeting is scheduled for April 24, eight days before the policy's 30-day review period is over.

Reusch said the new posting policy would be a step forward for freedom of expression on Eastern's campus but there is still more work to be done. He highlighted the current limitations on free speech zones as one problem.

Reusch said the entire campus should be a free speech zone.

"But one thing at a time, I guess," he said.