Released Monday by OSU President Ted Carter; I'm not up on the factual details, but I agree that such encampments can and should be forbidden under content-neutral time, place, and manner rules, and those rules should be enforced:
Listening to the feedback from our community over the last several days, I want to set the record straight regarding the events that took place on the South Oval on April 25.
I value and welcome free speech. I have spoken to this since the day I arrived here at Ohio State. As many of you know, I wore the cloth of our nation for 38 years to support and defend these rights. What occurred on our campus on April 25 was not about limiting free speech. It was an intentional violation of university space rules that exist so that teaching, learning, research, service and patient care can occur on our campuses without interruption.
As a public university, demonstrations, protests and disagreement regularly occur on our campus — so much so that we have trained staff and public safety professionals on-site for student demonstrations for safety and to support everyone's right to engage in these activities. Sadly, in recent days, I have watched significant safety issues be created by encampments on other campuses across our nation. These situations have caused in-person learning and commencement ceremonies to be canceled. Ohio State's campus will not be overtaken in this manner.
We have been abundantly clear in a multitude of communications that Ohio State has and will enforce the law and university policy, which is what we did on April 25. I most recently stated this in a campus message on April 22. Dr. Shivers again reinforced this and the rules that apply to Finals Week in a message to all students on April 23.
The university's long-standing space rules are content neutral and are enforced uniformly. Thursday's actions were taken because those involved in creating the encampment on the South Oval were in violation of these rules and had been notified of this beginning at 4:30 a.m. when the first encampment was attempted, and continuing repeatedly throughout the day. During and after the attempted encampment on Thursday morning, students asked our demonstration staff pointed questions about the space rules and received answers, confirming they were aware of the rules.
