At 4 p.m. on any of Yale’s outdoor spaces, no one can sing. No one can chant or play instruments, except from 12 to 1 p.m. and 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. on a weekday, with prior permission. No one can hang a flag from a college window, lean a painting against a wall, or place a sculpture on Cross Campus or Beinecke Plaza. Any works of art, left unattended, are banned.
Before last April, Yale’s rules on using outdoor spaces, postering, chalking, and light projection had remained largely untouched since 2016. Yet as student-led protests and encampments pressuring Yale to divest from arms manufacturers swept across campus last spring, the administration revised its policies on how, when, and where students could gather on campus spaces. In August 2024, Yale introduced dozens of updated or entirely new policies on outdoor spaces, its first major change to these policies in nearly a decade. Many of the policies specifically limit protest activities on Beinecke Plaza and Cross Campus—which not only served as key locations of the April demonstrations but also as sites with a decades-long history of student activism.
If you walk through Yale’s campus today, you might not notice that the university’s policies on the use of outdoor spaces have changed. Student organizations continue to host singing sessions, clothing pop-ups, and recruitment events, some without the required permission from the Office of the Secretary and Vice President for University Life. At least two student leaders I spoke with were unaware of the policy changes. Others I spoke to continue to use outdoor spaces as they did before: without administrator permission or pushback. Meanwhile, a few activist groups, especially those advocating for Palestinian causes, report heightened administrator scrutiny, social media surveillance, and restrictions on their activities.
Yale’s official policy on free expression has not changed. But in practice, Yale’s new rules restrict students’ ability to protest on campus. Furthermore, Yale’s inconsistent enforcement of its new policies suggests that the university designed the policies to limit student protest while appearing to uphold free speech.
A swift response
When asked whether the new policies were created or updated in response to pro-divestment protests, Pilar Montalvo, Assistant Vice President for University Life, and Kimberly Goff-Crews, Secretary and Vice President for University Life, responded in an email that the policies had been “reviewed in the summer of 2024 and some changes were made to clarify and provide additional details intended to be helpful to members of the university community.” But the timeline of the policy changes suggests that they were not just “clarified” or “updated” as claimed, but specifically enacted to curb activist actions and prevent further pro-Palestine protests such as those in April.
Yale made its first policy change after student organizers built a six-foot-tall wooden bookshelf on Beinecke Plaza and filled it with hundreds of works of anti-colonialist literature on April 16, 2024. The structure, part of a protest called “Books, Not Bombs,” urged Yale to divest from weapons-manufacturing companies that fuel global conflict, with a focus on Israel’s war on Gaza. Minutes after the makeshift library’s completion around noon, Montalvo ordered students to remove it, citing a university policy that states that “pathways and entryways to buildings must be kept clear and accessible.” When students did not comply, Montalvo directed Yale facilities workers to dismantle the structure. The Yale Daily News reported that for the hour the shelves stood, students and pedestrians were still able to pass through Beinecke Plaza to Schwarzman Center on either side of the bookshelf. In photos from the event, the bookshelf structure spanned about a third of the width of Schwarzman Plaza, with space on either side.
On April 22, a week after the bookshelves were removed, Goff-Crews emailed the student body to “clarify” Yale’s position on structures. Prior to that email, the university policy on structures did not exist on the Office of the Provost website. The new policy prohibits the placement of any structure, broadly defined as “structure, wall, barrier, tent, sculpture, artwork, or other object,” on any Yale outdoor space without written permission from the space’s administrator. After the administration removed the library, protests escalated to a multi-day encampment on Beinecke Plaza which culminated in the arrests of 47 students.
On August 19, 2024, the Office of the Secretary and Vice President for University Life published at least thirty new or updated policies on their website for the use of outdoor space, postering, chalking, light projection, and publicity. Prior to the April protests, these policies were generally permissive, as long as student activities showed “respect for university property and the rights of others.” Now, restrictions are much more specific, regulating everything from student art installations to where flags and banners can be hung, and defining sixty-minute slots for “singing, chanting, shouting, playing instruments, or using other noisemakers” in public spaces on weekdays. The use of Cross Campus by any groups in the month of May is now banned—without exception—to “prepare for commencement.” Yale has run 323 commencements without such a policy.
Selective enforcement
Yet if you take a look around Yale’s bulletin boards—by the Women’s Table, the York Street entrance to Old Campus, or in front of William L. Harkness Hall—you’ll find they’re often overflowing with posters that don’t follow university guidelines. Under Yale’s new regulations, only one unique poster can exist on each board, and every poster must include the sponsoring organization. Beginning in September 2024, I spent six weeks observing bulletin boards on campus and documented forty-seven violations of the postering policy during that time. Violators included posters from the Whitney Humanities Center and the Yale University Art Gallery—official departments of Yale University.
The postering policy also states that posters that don’t adhere to the rules may be removed by “authorized staff” weekly. I emailed Montalvo and Goff-Crews asking them to clarify who the “authorized staff” in charge of poster removal are—Goff-Crews replied, “Various staff at the university are authorized to remove posters that do not comply with the guidelines.” I continued to return to the same bulletin boards over the course of the six weeks and did not witness any of the posters in violation of guidelines removed. However, on December 1, 2023, when pro-divestment protestors posted a sixty-foot banner listing the names of thousands of Palestinians killed in Gaza since October 2023 on the front door of Woodbridge Hall, Montalvo permitted a Yale student—one who did not meet the definition of “authorized staff” as outlined in Yale’s policy—to remove the banner.
Between August 19, when the updated outdoor space use policies took effect, and November 5, the Office of the Secretary and Vice President for University Life approved eighty-seven group applications for use of Cross Campus and Beinecke Plaza, according to Goff-Crews. But student groups have continued to hold events in outdoor spaces without administrator permission.
On September 17, Yale Club Jump Rope held an outreach event for first-year students on Beinecke Plaza where they amplified music at 4:30 p.m., outside of the allowed time frame. A leader of the club confirmed that the group had not requested permission and was not questioned or confronted by any administrators. On September 14, the Yale LGBTQ Center—a university-funded department—held a pop-up giveaway of clothes and shoes on Cross Campus which included a clothes rack that could be classified as a “structure” according to Yale’s policy. A student who staffed the pop-up confirmed that the group didn’t email anyone to request use of the space, and added that nobody questioned whether the group was allowed to be there. On the night of September 16, Yale Nigun Circle, a group that typically meets on Monday nights in the Slifka Center for Jewish Life to sing wordless melodies and rounds, held a spontaneous singing circle on Cross Campus at 10 p.m. According to a group leader, the gathering was informal and unplanned, and no request for permission to sing on Cross Campus was made to the University administration. Other student groups have also sold merchandise and tickets on Cross Campus (where the sale of goods is prohibited), sung late at night on Old Campus, and staked art installations into Cross Campus—all without administrator pushback.
Though none of these events disrupted campus life or raised complaints, they all violated Yale’s new policy, which states that its rules are “meant to preserve these [outdoor campus] spaces for use by everyone.” But no action was taken against any of these groups, and many student groups continue to use campus spaces and post posters on bulletin boards without consequences. Yale’s inconsistent enforcement of its new policies raises a larger question: if amplified music, impromptu structures, and spontaneous singing aren’t truly disruptive to campus life, why are they restricted in the first place? By creating and then inconsistently enforcing new policies, Yale isn’t preserving campus spaces for “everyone”—it’s picking and choosing who gets to use them, and for what.
Monitoring dissent
Unlike their peer groups who continue to use outdoor spaces freely, several explicitly pro-Palestine student groups have reported increased surveillance by administrators, including personal phone calls from Montalvo, and social media monitoring by the Office of the Secretary and Vice President for University Life.
Nadine Cubeisy, a student organizer, says that her group is often contacted by Montalvo after they post to their Instagram. Following a post about Yalies4Palestine’s weekly meeting and dinner in October, Montalvo emailed Cubeisy directly to ask about the gatherings. “Our office has been notified that your group, Yalies4Palestine, has announced weekly gatherings of some sort on Tuesday evenings,” Montalvo wrote in the email. “However, there was no location provided. Do you plan to hold these on Cross Campus or Beinecke Plaza? Or do you have a different plan in mind?”
In November, Yalies4Palestine posted to Instagram about a study-in on Cross Campus, for which they submitted a form to Yale administration. The following morning, Cubeisy received an email from Nina Fattore, the Associate Director of University Life, saying that the “office had been notified that this event is already being advertised as a variation of the event from last year with the bookshelves,” and asking whether bookshelves or structures would be present. Fattore also directed Cubeisy to call Montalvo on her personal cell phone. Cubiesy said that Montalvo regularly calls her to check in on her group’s activities. Montalvo also regularly shows up in person at events that Cubiesy’s group hosts.
Last September, the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project (YUPP) planned a vigil at the Women’s Table to mourn the execution of Marcellus Khalifa Williams. Though unrelated to pro-Palestinian protest, YUPP had previously co-hosted events with Yalies4Palestine and endorsed Occupy Yale. Two days before the vigil, YUPP posted the details on Instagram. The next day, all board members received an email from Montalvo requesting they submit a form for approval. After complying, they were granted permission.
Former YUPP co-president Bahar Bouzarjomehri found the timing strange. “We hadn’t reached out to any Yale admin about this before,” she said. “I really don’t know how they found out about the vigil, if not by social media monitoring.” To Bouzarjomehri, the administration’s email and the fact that YUPP is openly supportive of Palestine seem connected. “It’s clear to us that we’re on some sort of radar,” she said.
It’s not just administrators: the Yale Police Department (YPD) has also been deeply involved in surveilling student activists through monitoring social media, student’s ID swipe history, campus camera footage, aerial drone photography, and through collaboration with the FBI, according to reporting by journalist Theia Chatelle ‘25. On December 20, 2024, Chatelle reported that the YPD not only monitored ongoing protests but tried to prevent future protests by tracking student social media. Emails exchanged between YPD compliance and crime analyst Vanessa Schencking, and YPD leadership contained screenshots of Instagram posts from pro-Palestine student groups. Another series of internal YPD emails cross-referenced Yalies4Palestine’s Instagram followers with students who were registered to attend Spring Fling, following a suggestion by YPD Director of Compliance and Strategic Initiatives Lisa Skelly-Byrnes that pro-Palestinian students might try to organize a protest at Spring Fling.
This invasive surveillance of pro-Palestinian students by Yale police and administrators raises serious concerns about student privacy. More troublingly, Yale’s systematic tracking and monitoring of student activists points to a concerted effort to silence dissent, particularly from pro-Palestine groups on campus. For Arjun Warrior, who is an organizer with the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition, the situation is clear: “The fact that new rules have only been created now, in response to pro-divestment and pro-Palestine protests, suggests that admin’s goal isn’t actually to enforce time, place, and manner restrictions. It’s to shut down speech that the board of trustees doesn’t want to hear,” he said.
Space as speech
For decades, Yale’s outdoor spaces—Beinecke Plaza in particular—have been used as sites of student protest, including anti-war art installations in the 1960s, anti-apartheid encampments in the 1980s, and fossil fuel divestment protests in 2020. It was this long history of student activism that inspired organizers last spring to make Beinecke the site of pro-divestment and pro-Palestine campus protests.
To many faculty and students, Yale’s decision to restrict student access to public spaces immediately after a major student protest feels like a direct attack on protest activity. At Yale, and everywhere, space and free expression are inherently linked, says Roderick Ferguson, a professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and American Studies at Yale whose work examines the relationship between universities and student protest. “One of the tools that’s in the activist toolkit is space and the use of space, because you’ve got to have your protest somewhere,” Ferguson explained. “That involves plazas, that means quad areas like Cross Campus, that involves buildings.” Yale itself acknowledges the connection between space and free expression: its new policies about outdoor space use are consolidated in a section titled “Free Expression at Yale” on the website for the Office of the Secretary and Vice President for University Life.
In its official communications and on its Free Expression at Yale website, Yale emphasizes its commitment to free expression, writing that “the free exchange of ideas…is essential to our goal of excellence…across the university.”
“To say that those spaces are no longer available for political uses is a way to remove that tool from the activist toolkit,” said Ferguson. “You have an effort to narrow the possibilities for activism, and in that way, the university is abdicating a very clear mission about what a university is.”
Student organizers are finding ways to continue their activism, even with the growing sense that public spaces at Yale are becoming less accessible. For Cubeisy, the process has become a strange sort of routine: filling out forms for approval, back-and-forth emails with Montalvo’s office. She sends me screenshots of their exchanges—negotiating the details of the Cross Campus study-in on November 4 and the Books Not Bombs referendum announcement on Beinecke Plaza on November 6. When Montalvo calls again on November 5, it’s to tell her that organizers are not allowed to block counter-protesters from filming them.
On the day of the study-in, students wrapped in blankets and keffiyehs sat in groups on Cross Campus, writing letters to University Provost Scott Strobel. Cubiesy moved among them, pausing to greet friends, smiling. You’d never guess the logistics behind it all—the forms, the emails, the calls, the fact that, at Yale, protesting means first having a personal phone conversation with a university administrator.
On December 8, Books Not Bombs passed. “Almost half of the Yale student body voted, and students overwhelmingly voted YES for disclosure, divestment, & reinvestment in Palestinian scholars & studies,” @sumudyale posted on Instagram. “Yale Board of Trustees, the students have spoken. It’s your turn now.”
Despite the new policies, the paperwork, the calls, the quiet absurdity of negotiating activism over the phone, and the growing sense that public spaces are no longer fully theirs to use, student organizing continues.
–Hannah Mark is a senior in Benjamin Franklin College and an Associate Editor of The New Journal.