Case Western Reserve University is changing how students can protest on its private University Circle campus.
Officials told Signal Ohio the updated rules – including loosening size and time restrictions on demonstrations – make the university “more flexible” to allow students to host vigils, encampments or other events. Yet students planning large gatherings still must navigate a network of rules to win university approval.
The changes come as the Trump administration continues pressuring universities to clamp down on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. In 2024, Case Western Reserve was one of nearly 80 colleges nationwide where students hosted weeks-long encampments to protest the war in Gaza.
As a new school year begins, one of Case Western Reserve’s biggest changes to the demonstration policy includes redefining how many people can attend a “small” demonstration. Now, events with fewer than 100 people fall into that category. Previously, officials capped it at 20 participants.
University officials declined to answer Signal’s question about how they came to that number.
Which events don’t need pre-approval and which ones do
Events lasting no more than two hours with fewer than 100 expected participants don’t need pre-approval. Those smaller gatherings, though, “cannot be conducted in a manner that creates a safety risk, disrupts the ordinary activities of CWRU, or violates any CWRU Policy,” per the university’s recently updated Freedom of Expression policy.
In another change, administrators will now allow events to last two hours longer than in previous years. The new window during which students can demonstrate or hold events is 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., past the previous deadline of 8 p.m.
“We value the free exchange of ideas on our campus, and this must be balanced with the safety of our community, equal access to university facilities and maintenance of ongoing operations,” the university’s president, Eric Kaler, wrote in a letter to students, faculty and staff earlier this month.
Kaler’s email also said officials prefer four specific areas on campus for demonstrations. One of them includes the Kelvin Smith Library Oval, the site where students and community members protested back in May 2024. This location was previously the only one available for approved demonstrations.
University officials declined to say how they will respond to students who try to stage an event without following the guidelines. It’s the second consecutive fall semester where officials are updating those requirements.
The latest revamp reflects “lessons learned during the last academic year,” Kaler wrote. The May 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment sparked a contentious relationship between university leaders and some student activists.
Several months later, authorities indicted 11 people, including six Case Western Reserve students, on vandalism charges. The Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office alleged the group did $400,000 worth of damage to campus property to protest the war in Gaza, Ideastream Public Media reported. Their arrests sparked more campus protests.
Suggested Reading
CWRU renames campus committee
Case Western Reserve students planning a larger event must now submit a written request at least 24 hours ahead of the proposed start time. That’s a change from the university’s previous three-day requirement.
A 20-person group made up of high-ranking employees from across the university will review students’ requests. Student government representatives and faculty members participate, too. Though the group existed in previous semesters, it was recently renamed as the Demonstration Request Review Committee.
Only students and groups in good standing with the university can submit a request to this committee, according to the policy.
This committee is counterintuitive to the ethos of student organizing, according to second-year student Moses Fleischman. The point of on-campus activism, he said, is “often to call attention to what an administration is doing and oppose it.”
“So having the oversight by the administration, and the ability of the administration, to say whether or not people can do that is exactly antithetical,” he said.
Fleischman is the communications lead for the university’s chapter of the Ohio Students Association, a progressive advocacy group. He said students not highly involved in campus activities haven’t seemed to talk much about the changes.
Case Western Reserve’s satire magazine, The Athenian, poked fun at the policy in an Instagram post.
“President Kaler generously allows an additional two hours of designated protest time as soon as you answer his riddles three,” they wrote.
How other large Ohio universities handle demonstrations
Across the state, Kent State University officials said they have not altered any demonstration policies ahead of the new academic year.
Those rules don’t outline any specific time or participant restrictions, though a protest guide produced by the public university’s student government notes events “should not interfere with classes or the function of the university as a whole.”
Ohio State University also told Signal there have been no updates to its “space standards.”
The state’s public flagship institution has recently come under scrutiny from critics saying other university-wide changes, such as banning students from writing messages in chalk on campus sidewalks, are attacks on free speech.