Trinity College: Professor Faces Threats, Investigation for Facebook Posts

July 7, 2017

In June 2017, Trinity College Professor Johnny Eric Williams shared — on his personal Facebook page — an anonymous author’s controversial essay, entitled “Let Them Fucking Die.”

Trinity College: New Social Code Erodes Freedom of Association

August 20, 2004

In October 2012, Trinity College’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved the recommendations of a report prepared by the college’s specially created Charter Committee for Building Social Community at Trinity College. The report includes a new Social Code that imposes dramatic new regulations on “social organizations,” primarily fraternities and sororities. Among its numerous requirements, the code forbids selective membership, prohibits association with national single-sex social organizations, and requires them to achieve “minority gender” parity in membership and leadership. In addition, social organizations will be required to gain recognition from the administration and any students who associate with unrecognized groups will be […]

Student Handbook: Computing, Communications, and Video Systems Regulations

Speech Code Category: Internet Usage Policies
Last updated: September 9, 2016

Sending lewd or intimidating messages via the network is harassment.

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Student Handbook: Residential Guidelines- Room and Furniture Condition

Speech Code Category: Posting and Distribution Policies
Last updated: September 9, 2016

Pictures and other materials that may be considered to be objectionable are subject to removal in areas that may be visible outside a residence hall room/suite/apartment (e.g., directly in windows, exteriors of doors, etc.).

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Student Handbook: College Regulations- Social Code

Speech Code Category: Harassment Policies
Last updated: September 9, 2016

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Student Handbook: Poster and Banner Regulations

Speech Code Category: Posting and Distribution Policies
Last updated: September 9, 2016

Individuals and organizations are expected to use good judgment and civility when posting information.

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All recognized student organizations must submit posters, banners and all other marketing materials (including apparel designs see the Apparel Guidelines on the SAIL website) to the SAIL office for approval prior to posting/ordering. Without the approval of the SAIL office, posters may be removed immediately

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Trinity College Policy on Sexual Misconduct

Speech Code Category: Harassment Policies
Last updated: September 9, 2016

Sexual harassment, whether opposite or same sex, includes but is not limited to: unwelcome sexual advances, unwelcome requests for sexual favors, or other behavior of a sexual nature, on or off-campus, when: … such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s education or employment by creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive educational, living, or work environment.

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Examples of behavior that might be considered sexual harassment include, but are not limited to:

• Unwanted sexual innuendo, propositions, sexual attention, or suggestive comments and gestures; inappropriate humor about sex or gender-specific traits; sexual slurs or derogatory language directed at another person’s sexuality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or gender expression; insults and threats based on sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or gender expression; and other oral, written, or electronic communications of a sexual nature that an individual communicates is unwanted and unwelcome.
• Written graffiti or the display or distribution of sexually explicit drawings, pictures, or written materials; sexually charged name-calling; or the circulation, display, or creation of emails, text messages, or websites of a sexual nature.
• Display or circulation of written materials or pictures degrading to an individual or gender group where such display is not directly related to academic freedom or to an educational/pedagogical, artistic, or work purpose.

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• Acts of verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility based on sex or sex-stereotyping.

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Student Handbook: Policy Statement on Discrimination, General Harassment and Abuse, Sexual Harassment, and Sexual Misconduct

Speech Code Category: Harassment Policies
Last updated: September 9, 2016

Discriminatory harassment includes conduct specifically directed at an individual or a small group of individuals and expresses hatred or contempt on the basis of stereotyped group characteristics or because of a person’s identification with a particular group. Discriminatory harassment also includes any action or speech directed toward members of the aforementioned groups that reasonably can be determined to be threatening in content or is spoken in a manner that suggests violence toward such persons is imminent.

Discriminatory harassment may be found to have occurred when harassing conduct is sufficiently severe, pervasive, or persistent that it interferes with or limits a student’s or employee’s ability to participate in or gain the privileges of programs and services of the College.

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Incident Response Team: Definitions of Bias and Hate

Speech Code Category: Policies on Bias and Hate Speech
Last updated: September 9, 2016

Bias incidents … can include taunting, verbal harassment, bullying, intimidation, or the posting or circulating of demeaning jokes or documents.

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Student Handbook: The Trinity College Student Integrity Contract

Speech Code Category: Advertised Commitments to Free Expression
Last updated: September 9, 2016

According to the mission statement of Trinity College, excellence in liberal arts education relies on critical thinking, freeing the mind from parochialism and prejudice, and encouraging students to lead examined lives. Free inquiry and free expression are essential for the attainment of these goals.

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Student Handbook: General Harassment/Abuse

Speech Code Category: Harassment Policies
Last updated: September 9, 2016

Harassment includes, but is not limited to, physical or non-physical behavior, such as assault, abuse, stalking, hazing, invasion of privacy, and intimidation. The following definitions provide examples of behavior that will not be tolerated:

• Assault is nonconsensual physical contact that places someone in fear or
  apprehension of immediate harm. Relationship violence may also be categorized as assault.

• Stalking refers to a pattern of behavior in which an individual willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows another in his/her course of daily activities in such a way that the stalker’s actions can reasonably be found to interfere with another person’s ability to perform his or her regular duties or cause that person to feel frightened, intimidated, harassed, threatened, or molested.

• Invasion of privacy is unauthorized taking and use of facts, information, and/or property not in the public domain that a reasonable person would desire to keep from the public eye.

• Intimidation is spoken, written, or physical conduct directed toward an individual or individuals that unreasonably interferes with their full participation in the Trinity College community or that is intended to create or may be reasonably determined to have created a threatening or hostile environment

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Student Handbook: Poster and Banner Regulations

Speech Code Category: Advertised Commitments to Free Expression
Last updated: September 9, 2016

Students and student organizations should be free to examine and discuss all questions of interest to them and to express opinions publicly and privately.

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‘Disinvitations’ for College Speakers are on the Rise — Here’s a List of People Turned Away this Year

July 29, 2016

By Abby Jackson at Business Insider Student activism has long been ingrained in the culture of college campuses, but protests about perceived discrimination over the past year have been especially tense… Read more here.

FIRE Hopes Co-ed Blunder Will Soon Be Reversed

September 16, 2015

By Bob Kellogg at OneNewsNow The head of a Connecticut college has decided that forcing fraternities and sororities to go co-ed would be a bad idea, and an organization that aims to defend and sustain individual rights in America’s colleges and universities agrees with that decision. Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeney has asked the board to endorse the elimination of the co-ed mandate requiring gender parity for student social clubs. Peter Bonilla, director of the Individual Rights Defense Program at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), tells OneNewsNow fraternity and sorority charters require single-gender admissions. “What would almost […]

Trinity College President James Jones Will Retire Early

May 6, 2013

Trinity College President James F. Jones Jr., who has been under fire for his decision to force fraternities and sororities to go coed, announced Monday that he will step down a year early, on June 30, 2014. Jones, 66, has been at the center of a firestorm of protest since October, when he and the board of trustees approved a plan requiring fraternities and sororities to go coed starting this fall. Fraternity and sorority members have argued that going coed will effectively shut them down. Alumni have threatened to withhold donations, and some called for Jones’ resignation. In an email to students […]

Trinity President Moves Up Retirement Under Alumni Fire

May 6, 2013

Trinity College (78323MF) President James Jones, criticized for demanding that fraternities go co-ed, will step down in June 2014, a year earlier than originally planned. Jones announced his expedited resignation in an e-mail today to the Hartford, Connecticut-based college community, hours before a scheduled meeting called to oppose the co-ed plan. Students and some alumni plan to gather this evening as part of a challenge to a college decree that its Greek houses admit members of the opposite gender starting in September. Each of Trinity’s 10 fraternities and sororities will be required to have 45 percent of their members from […]

Trinity College Leader Moves Up Retirement Under Alumni Fire

May 6, 2013

Trinity College President James Jones, under fire for demanding that fraternities go co-ed, will step down in June 2014, a year earlier than originally planned.   Jones announced his expedited resignation in an e-mail today to the Hartford, Connecticut-based college community, hours before a scheduled meeting called to oppose the co-ed plan.   Students and some alumni plan to gather this evening as part of a challenge to a college decree that its Greek houses admit members of the opposite gender starting in September. Each of Trinity’s 10 fraternities and sororities will be required to have 45 percent of their members from the opposite […]

Trinity College ceases unwarranted investigation of professor’s Facebook posts

July 14, 2017

Academic freedom has won at Trinity College today, as the college’s president wrote in a public statement that Trinity would cease its unwarranted investigation into the personal Facebook posts of professor Johnny Eric Williams. As my colleague Adam Steinbaugh reported last week, Williams had been under investigation for the content of his Facebook posts, where he shared an article by an anonymous author arguing that the proper response to wounded “bigots” was to “let them fucking die” instead of coming to their aid. In today’s statement, Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeney opens by recognizing that “[f]reedom of inquiry and freedom […]

Trinity College professor’s ‘let them fucking die’ posts are protected speech; continued investigation unwarranted

July 7, 2017

On June 16, Trinity College professor Johnny Eric Williams shared, via his personal Facebook page, an anonymous writer’s controversial essay urging oppressed minorities to “do nothing” to help if they encountered people “who practice bigotry” in danger. The piece cited the actions of Crystal Griner, a “queer black woman” and member of the U.S. Capitol Police, in saving the life of Rep. Steve Scalise, “one of the most anti-LGBTQ politicians in Washington,” after Scalise was shot and severely wounded by a gunman at a congressional baseball practice on June 14. The Medium essay concluded that the proper response to “bigots” […]

Disturbing trend continues: Trinity College professor faces threats

June 23, 2017

The repeated outbreaks of violence in response to campus speech made the past semester one of the most depressing I’ve worked in my decade of defending campus rights here at FIRE. Unfortunately, that ugly trend is now matched by another deeply disturbing phenomenon: professors fielding violent threats for exercising their right to free speech. The list of recent examples is growing at a grim rate. My colleague Samantha Harris wrote for Vox earlier this month about Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who received threats following a Hampshire College commencement address in which she criticized President Donald Trump. Texas A&M University […]

Trinity College President Calls to Eliminate Co-Ed Mandate

September 4, 2015

In a win for freedom of association today, Trinity College president Joanne Berger-Sweeney announced she has asked the college’s board to endorse eliminating the “coed mandate” that would have forced fraternities and sororities at the Connecticut college to admit students of both genders. FIRE wrote to Trinity in 2013 after its board of trustees approved a proposal calling for, among other requirements, gender parity requirements to be applied to student social clubs. The move threatened to end sororities and fraternities which by their charters are required to maintain single-gender admissions, and seriously infringed on students’ right to freedom of association, […]

Amherst Bans Fraternities, Sororities, and Similar Organizations On and Off Campus

May 9, 2014

Amherst College’s Board of Trustees sent out an email Tuesday announcing that it was reaffirming its 1984 ban on the college’s recognition of fraternities and sororities—and that it would be taking things a step further this summer in a move that will take a significant bite out of Amherst students’ ability to freely associate.

Trinity Policy Change Renders Promise of Freedom of Association Meaningless

September 17, 2013

In October 2012, Trinity College’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved a measure enforcing strict new regulations on “social organizations,” effectively spelling the end of fraternities and sororities at Trinity. Trinity’s new policies prohibit selective membership in all social organizations and mandate that all existing social organizations achieve rough gender parity in both membership and leadership. Further, they require all social organizations to receive official recognition and approval; students participating in unrecognized social organizations “will be subject to separation from the College.” As FIRE pointed out in a letter sent to Trinity President James F. Jones, Jr. in March 2013, this […]

16th Annual ‘Campus Muzzle’ Awards Feature Yale, Tufts, Harvard

June 27, 2013

The “Muzzles” live! The 16th annual “Campus Muzzle” Awards, previously featured in the now-sadly-defunct Boston Phoenix, have found a new home this year on WGBH News online, as well as in the Portland Phoenix. FIRE co-founder and Chairman Harvey Silverglate awards the Campus Muzzles each year to the worst universities in New England for First Amendment rights. (Harvey’s Campus Muzzles are a sidebar to Dan Kennedy’s Muzzle Awards, which feature his selection of the worst free speech violators off-campus in New England.)  This year, Yale University “wins” for its disturbing disregard for free speech on its new overseas campus in […]

William Voegeli on the Purpose of College and the Fight for Free Speech

June 25, 2013

William Voegeli, senior editor of the Claremont Review of Books, wrote for Real Clear Politics yesterday to discuss the shift in why students go to college and how their focus hinders progress with respect to open and frank discussion on campus. He laments that for many young people, college is a means to an end; potential employers view a student’s admission to an elite college and ability to obtain a degree as indicators that that student is capable of a successful career, regardless of how much the student actually learns in college. Since the primary motivation for going to college […]

Fraternities, Sororities Object as Trinity Tramples Freedom of Association; President, Board Chairman Step Down

May 7, 2013

Here’s today’s press release: HARTFORD, Conn., May 7, 2013—In a surprise announcement via email yesterday, Trinity College President James Jones announced his intention to step down from his post in June 2014, one year before the end of his contract. Jones reported in the same email that Board of Trustees Chair Paul E. Raether will also leave the Trustees’ top position. Trinity’s two top leaders signaled their departures as student and alumni dissatisfaction is increasing over a new social code that violates Trinity’s promises of freedom of association and effectively bans fraternities and sororities through gender quotas and other measures.  FIRE […]

Fraternities, Sororities Object as Trinity Tramples Freedom of Association; President, Board Chairman Step Down

May 7, 2013

HARTFORD, Conn., May 7, 2013—In a surprise announcement via email yesterday, Trinity College President James Jones announced his intention to step down from his post in June 2014, one year before the end of his contract. Jones reported in the same email that Board of Trustees Chair Paul E. Raether will also leave the Trustees’ top position. Trinity’s two top leaders signaled their departures as student and alumni dissatisfaction is increasing over a new social code that violates Trinity’s promises of freedom of association and effectively bans fraternities and sororities through gender quotas and other measures. FIRE President Greg Lukianoff was […]

Trinity College President, Trustee Chair Announce Plans to Step Aside as Debate Rages Over New Social Code

May 6, 2013

This morning, Trinity College President James Jones sent an email to the Trinity campus community announcing his intention to step down from his post on June 30, 2014, one year earlier than his contract was scheduled to end. Jones will resign from his tenured faculty position at that time as well. In his email, Jones also announced that—at the same time of his planned resignation—Board of Trustees Chair Paul E. Raether will step down from the Trustees’ top position. The announcement that these two top Trinity officials will be stepping down simultaneously is particularly notable given the controversy over Trinity’s […]

FIRE President Greg Lukianoff Speaking at Trinity College

May 2, 2013

FIRE President Greg Lukianoff will be on the campus of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., on Monday, May 6, to discuss his book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, and the ongoing threat to freedom of association, particularly to Greek organizations, posed by recent policy changes at the college. Trinity’s new Social Code seeks to take a sledgehammer to fraternities and sororities on campus by requiring them to adhere to a strict set of requirements that include minority-gender membership quotas, prohibitions against selective membership, and threats of expulsion for those students who seek to escape these […]

Trinity College Jettisons Freedom of Association for Greek Organizations

May 1, 2013

The tension that often exists between universities and their fraternity and sorority systems is far from new. At Trinity College in Connecticut, however, that tension has taken on whole new proportions this year, as the college—with the blessing of its Board of Trustees—is taking a metaphorical sledgehammer to such organizations, severely threatening freedom of association at the college. On March 13, FIRE officially registered its concerns in a letter sent to the university.   The controversy at Trinity erupted in October 2012, when Trinity’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved the recommendations of a report prepared by the college’s specially created […]