Trin’s Crown Jewel of DEI: Suppressing Free Speech

Kevin Rogers ‘26

Contributing Writer

Last week, during a Board of Trustees dinner, a group of forty students rallied to demand disclosure of the school’s endowment investments as well as divestment from companies that support the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Twelve students received emails from administrators requiring them to attend a disciplinary meeting, in which they received admonitions. Additionally, these students were warned that more severe disciplinary action could be taken in the future.

Trinity often talks about creating an environment in which Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are protected. One area in which it is doing nothing less than a magnificent job is in its attempt to suppress dissent among its student body. Of the twelve students who were called to disciplinary meetings with the deans, eleven were women, and many of them were queer, people of color, or international students. The main concern of the administrators seemed to be the level of noise made by the protestors, who spent the duration of the dinner chanting and singing freedom songs outside of Hamlin Hall, where it was held. Though the meetings were called under the pretense of a noise violation, the harsh interpretation of the student handbook points to more other motives. Students were given 24 hours to respond to the summons for meetings, and were told that the hearings would proceed even in their absence. While these seemingly improvised disciplinary procedures (which do not appear in the student handbook) pose a chilling threat to free speech, more sinister still is the fact that the eleven admonitions handed out to the twelve students asked to meet with the deans were not handed out for individual behaviors where people went ‘rogue,’ but seemingly for merely participating in the protest at all. If Vice President Joe DiChristina and the rest of the deans can hand out admonitions–a formal warning that more serious punishment is not far behind– at will, then the right of all students to express their free speech is at risk, regardless of what Trinity says about protecting students’ First Amendment rights.

How out of a diverse group of at least forty students, the deans picked twelve, at random(?) and came up with eleven women (including, miraculously, a woman who was not in attendance at the protests– imagine that), is beyond me. Perhaps President Berger-Sweeney and Vice President DiChristina put all of the protestors’ names in a hat and it was simply an unlikely draw. Your guess is as good as mine, but I doubt it. I think Trinity’s campus culture is one that makes targeting women okay, even for the powers that be. In the last decade, at least five Title IX coordinators, including the current coordinator, who works on an interim basis, and primarily remotely. Such high turnover is shocking and concerning, pointing to a pervasive rape culture on campus. From 2019-2021, the college’s security report reported 22 instances of rape on campus, as well as 17 instances of forcible touching in the same timeframe. Also reported were 13 instances of dating violence and 11 cases of stalking. No wonder our Title IX coordinators seem to run for the hills every couple of years when the job turns out to be way more than they bargained for.

Maybe the administration truly did pick these women by accident when doling out their admonitions, but the fact of the matter is, even if that is the case, it points to a hierarchical and sexist culture so deeply entrenched in this campus that it permeates the very stones of the Long Walk, one that even the higher-ups tasked with protecting these students unintentionally reinforce. Maybe the deans recognized the power women hold in these ongoing protests and want them silenced in hopes of quelling the movement as a whole, but what is clear regardless is that to target these students for disciplinary action is to do two things: to reinforce a set of despicable norms that are all too accepted on this campus, and to actively silence dissent. Both of these are extremely concerning. The right of students to protest–even when you do not agree with their beliefs– is paramount to Trinity’s stated goal of creating bold, independent thinkers who lead transformative lives. So for the women on this campus, as well as those of us willing to get off the couch and fight for our brothers and sisters in Gaza, I urge Dean Joe and Co. to do better.