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UVA touts free speech on Grounds while continuing to restrict student organizers 

Criminal and disciplinary charges have been dropped against protesters arrested at UVA on May 4. Photo by Eze Amos.

Charges against student protesters arrested May 4 have been dropped, but the University of Virginia continues to grapple with protections for and restrictions on freedom of speech. While celebrating its status as the No.1 campus for free speech in the nation, UVA is cracking down on students’ ability to demonstrate on Grounds.

Prior to the start of fall semester, the university updated its rules governing “demonstrations and access to shared spaces” on Grounds. Through these changes, UVA has not only deemed any form of encampment against university policy, but outlined a willingness to escalate to trespass warnings and arrest for noncompliance.

Key changes to demonstration policy include: expanding the definition of the Academical Village, which is subject to additional demonstration restrictions; banning outdoor events on Grounds, including demonstrations, between 2 and 6am; prohibiting camping, with or without a tent, in outdoor spaces; prohibiting sleeping outside between midnight and 6am; and requiring any person wearing a face covering to provide identification if requested by a UVA official.

Students who fail to comply with UVA policy after being informed of a violation can face disciplinary action including “the issuance of an interim suspension by Student Affairs and a trespass warning by law enforcement. Failure to abide by the trespass warning will result in arrest. Every reasonable effort will be made to resolve the matter at the lowest possible level without the involvement of law enforcement.”

UVA’s policies on protests, demonstrations, and gatherings on university property, which include potential consequences for policy violations, can be found at freespeech.virginia.edu/policies-regulations.

Earlier this month, UVA officials demonstrated a willingness to both enforce these new policies and call university police for peaceful noncompliance. According to The Daily Progress, on September 12, Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Marsh Pattie informed students on the Lawn making signs calling for divestment that their use of a folding table violated policy, and asked a student wearing a mask to provide ID.

When the student did not identify themself, Pattie threatened to contact university police. The situation deescalated when the student left the area and the table was taken down. The table was briefly set up again in front of a Lawn room with the permission of its resident, but was deconstructed again when Pattie returned with another official.

In the midst of the implementation of new rules and a crackdown on peaceful organizing, UVA was named the top college for free speech in the nation on September 5 by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

“FIRE considered several factors, including students’ perceived ability to have difficult conversations, their comfort expressing views on controversial topics and perceptions of their administration’s support for free speech,” wrote University News Senior Associate Jane Kelly in a UVAToday article highlighting the announcement. “The top-ranked colleges have the highest average score among all students surveyed and have the most open environments for free speech.”

For student and faculty organizers, the announcement, and UVA’s public celebration of free speech on Grounds, was deeply ironic.

“If they’re so proud of [the FIRE ranking], then I think [UVA] should roll back the new protest guidelines and start to really listen to faculty and students,” said Laura Goldblatt, assistant professor and faculty liaison for pro-Palestine student protesters, in an interview with C-VILLE. “If they’re so proud of their rankings, then they should follow through on the actions that those rankings might require of them. Instead of using them as a publicity tool, they should use them as a way to guide their decisions about policy.”

Calculated through more than 58,000 surveys, FIRE’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings considered data collected from students between January 25 and June 17 this year. Beyond surveys, schools were not further penalized for actions related to encampment protests, according to Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens.

“This decision was made because many schools were likely dealing with a complicated mix of protected and unprotected speech, so accurately adjudicating each individual incident that may or may not have made one of our databases would’ve been impossible,” said Stevens in an email. He further highlighted a footnote from the report, noting that, “The impact of the encampment protests on the campus speech climate is captured by responses to survey questions that ask students about their confidence that their college administration protects speech rights on campus, their comfort expressing controversial political views, and how frequently they self-censor. Deplatformings that occurred during the encampment protests were also still included in the calculation of the 2025 College Free Speech Rankings.”

Laura Beltz, director of policy reform for FIRE, said UVA’s updated demonstration policies will be reviewed as part of the nonprofit’s annual speech code report in January.

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Come together: Revised UVA speech policy earns high marks

UVA alum Bruce Kothmann, who was removed from the steps of the Rotunda in May for reading a Bible without permission, tested restrictions again in July by waiving a gay pride flag. Bruce Kothmann

By Jonathan Haynes

Despite the controversy over the University of Virginia’s revisions to its right-to-assemble policies, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has awarded the university its highest free speech rating.

FIRE, a group that defends the constitutional rights of students and faculty in higher ed, ranked UVA as a “green-light” university, along with with 42 other universities out of the 466 it monitors around the country, ahead of “yellow light” James Madison University and “red light” Virginia State University.

“We classify schools as red, yellow, green light based on how well the First Amendment is upheld at public schools and how well any school follows its own policies,” says Robert Shibley, the executive director of FIRE. “UVA has generally done a pretty good job.”

UVA alum Bruce Kothmann stirred debate over UVA’s campus speech policies last May, after an officer removed him from grounds for reading a Bible on the steps of the Rotunda without the university’s permission.

A viral video of the stunt shows an officer calmly listing newly prohibited activities to Kothmann, who asks if “reading the Bible aloud” is included. After pausing and flailing his left arm, the officer says, “Apparently.”

The revised “time, place, and manner” policy was written by the Dean’s Working Group, a steering committee established by UVA’s then-president Teresa Sullivan after a crowd of torch-bearing neo-Nazis set upon a small group of protestors surrounding the Jefferson statue on August 11, 2017.

The policy restricts people who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights and are not UVA students, staff, or faculty to one of nine designated areas, among them Nameless Field and the McIntire Amphitheater, where they may assemble with a maximum of 25 to 50 people for no more than two hours. Non-affiliated persons must request permission between one and four weeks in advance. Violators may be banned, but are typically just removed.

Shibley doesn’t foresee any legal challenges because the policy is content-neutral and justified by a safety interest. The policy “passes constitutional muster,” he says. “But I think it’s very disappointing that the university adopted it.” Nonetheless, that didn’t prevent FIRE from giving UVA the green light because its policies don’t interfere with student expression.

UVA modeled its revisions after the University of Maryland’s time, place, and manner restrictions, which were upheld by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Kothmann, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania was visiting his alma mater last May to see his daughter, who had just completed her second year at UVA. He had read about the policy in the UVA alumni newsletter and, unable to shake it from his mind, decided to test campus enforcement.

The revisions proved controversial before their release, drawing criticism from members of the Faculty Senate Policy Committee Council. And some activists, students, and faculty had been pressuring UVA to ban specific organizations, since alt-right marchers were the perpetrators of on-campus violence August 11.

UVA banned 10 individuals involved in the torch march, but maintained that it is constitutionally forbidden from banning people or groups for ideological reasons.

“Times are changing, context is changing,” says Curry School professor Walt Heinecke. “Maybe it’s time for UVA to start legally pushing to see how far it can move that discussion.”

Critics lament the policy’s chilling effects on protest. Both Heinecke and William Keene, a professor of environmental science at UVA, point out that past on-campus protests against racial injustice, the invasion of Cambodia, and the ouster of Teresa Sullivan would not be permissible under the revised policy.

Shibley agrees that the policy could have negative consequences: “During the civil rights movement, non-students were coming on campus to engage in discussion and protests,” he says, adding that fewer interactions with the community will limit students’ exposure to different perspectives.

The policy has stirred little reaction from students, however, who are still free to protest. Student groups that are officially registered with student council may also invite an unlimited number of non-affiliated persons to grounds, but groups that are not registered, such as UVA Students United and the Living Wage Campaign, could be affected.

When the on-campus protests for the anniversary of August 11 and 12 presented an opportunity to test the policy’s enforceability, UVA ended up enacting security measures that far superseded the policy’s parameters, such as requiring clear bags, installing metal detectors and fencing around campus, and vastly restricting the plaza around the Jefferson statue, where UVA Students United and other activists had planned a protest.

But besides Kothmann, there are few known instances of people being removed for violating the policy.

And Kothmann has violated the policy several times without incident since his removal. In July, he waved a gay pride flag on the Rotunda steps and reported himself to the university counsel. After an hour without a response, he reported himself to a receptionist inside the Rotunda. “I saw you,” she said. “Do you need a drink of water?”

Outside of UVA President Jim Ryan’s inauguration on October 19, Kothmann and his daughter handed out flyers about the restrictions to several administrative officials. Many of them took one, including Ryan. On November 2, Kothmann reported himself for juggling pomegranates in the McIntire Amphitheater. Nobody responded. 

Correction January 3: Robert Shibley’s name was misspelled in the original story.

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Tactical change: Not your grandpa’s protest

Jason Kessler Photo by Eze Amos

In images from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, African-Americans in their Sunday best peacefully protested, and when violence occurred, it came from police or from virulent racists.

Those are not the optics of today’s demonstrations.

Instead, protesters knock cell phones out of people’s hands, blast them with bullhorns, block filming with hands or hats and link arms to prevent passage—and that was just at the May 14 vigil in Lee Park after the Richard Spencer white nationalist crew was there the night before.

And a video circulating from May 20 shows right-wing blogger Jason Kessler with three other people sitting at a restaurant table on the Downtown Mall, surrounded by a dozen or so people shouting, “Nazis go home” and ordering them to leave.

“You don’t get to dictate who comes in or out,” said a police officer responding to the scene.

“White supremacists should not be allowed to move quietly in public spaces,” says Pam Starsia with Showing Up for Racial Justice, which has been active in confronting Confederate memorial supporters and the alt-right—although Starsia says she’s speaking only for herself, not for SURJ.

In sharp contrast to the 1920s, when members of the Ku Klux Klan met secretly in the dark wearing white hoods, yet passed by day in polite society, she says, the strategy now is to disrupt and “to loudly call out white supremacists in public spaces.”

And yet some local activists’ tactics straddle the line between free speech and criminal behavior.

“It’s very disturbing,” says Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman. The heated rhetoric leads “to an atmosphere of antagonism,” which leads to escalation. “We should all discourage behavior that stops short of criminal offenses.”

In his more than 30 years as a prosecutor, Chapman has seen a number of protests. The difference in the current crop is “the intensity and the physical confrontation accompanying it,” he says, as well as the participation of people from outside the community.

UVA professor and activist Jalane Schmidt explains the trajectory of protest tactics since the 1950s, when Martin Luther King Jr. organized a movement of “respectability politics” and was influenced by Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau’s nonviolent resistance.

That changed in the 1960s and ’70s with the Black Panthers, who wore military garb and “eschewed respectability politics,” she says. “The tactics always change with time.”

She says, “The 21st century descendants of the Klan are the alt-right. They should not be allowed to circulate anonymously in polite society.”

A May 24 press release from the anonymous Cville Solidarity suggested a laundry list of ways to resist white supremacy. “Refuse to employ, work with, serve or shop with Nazis. Refuse to sit next to them at a bar or restaurant. Refuse to let them sit peacefully in a public space,” it said.

“There’s a harassment and intimidation campaign being led by Joe and Pam Starsia,” Kessler says. Joe Starsia was in the video of the mall shouters, and activist Veronica Fitzhugh can be seen yelling in Kessler’s face, “Fucking go home. Get up and go home.”

Earlier that night, Kessler said he went to Champion Brewery and was refused service. “They violated my civil rights,” he says.

Can businesses deny service to those whose politics or philosophy they don’t like?

“Beliefs and philosophies are protected constitutionally against actions by government,” John Jeffries, former dean of UVA’s law school, writes in an email. “Private parties are free to act against unwelcome beliefs and philosophies, unless there is a statute against such discrimination.”

For Champion owner Hunter Smith, Kessler’s civil rights “didn’t cross my mind for a minute,” he says. “He assaulted someone who works for the business. It was a safety issue.”

Jay Taylor, the man whom Kessler punched on the mall January 22, frequents the brewery and does work there, says Smith.

However, in the face of demands that service be denied, Miller’s is taking a different tack after some white nationalists came there for beers following the tiki-torch assembly at Lee Park. Miller’s Scottie Kaylor calls for courtesy on Facebook and writes: “Our policy is simple: if any person or group, on either side of the political spectrum, displays an overt hatred or disrespect for others at Miller’s, they will be asked to leave.”

Arrests from protests are mounting. After the February 11 Lee Park rally that brought gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart to town to protest City Council’s vote to remove the Robert E. Lee statue, Kessler filed charges against Sara Tansey for snatching his phone. She was charged with destruction of property and Tansey filed an assault charge against Joe Draego, claiming he grabbed her arm when he retrieved Kessler’s phone.

At the May 14 candlelight demonstration at Lee Park, Jordan McNeish was charged with disorderly conduct for allegedly spitting on Kessler, Charles Best was charged with felony assault for hitting an officer in the head with a thrown cell phone, and Kessler was charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to leave the park and inciting with a bullhorn, say police.

“Police said I wouldn’t leave the park,” says Kessler. Protesters “wouldn’t let me leave. They were blocking me. They encircled me so that I was trapped.”

“Jason Kessler barged into a peaceful space that had been created by people of color with every intention of inciting a confrontation,” says Pam Starsia. “He was the aggressor.”

In video and photographs from the May 14 event, a young man filming is encircled by people who are asking why he was filming, blocking his camera and, he says on the video, knocking his cell phone out of his hand.

Blocking people filming is a tactic that comes from a practice called “doxxing,” says Starsia, in which leftist activists are filmed and their images are put online to “encourage harassment.”

“It’s a mob tactic used online by the left and the right,” says Kessler.

Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead compares current protests to ’60s sit-ins, where demonstrators “didn’t stop someone from free speech,” he says.

“The more I read about it, these people don’t want free speech,” he says. “You can’t block other people’s right to move on public property. These people need to grow up and respect other people’s rights.”

Is it free speech or assault?

What’s legal and what’s not in the resistance? We checked with Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman.

Slapping away a person’s cell phone: “Unwanted touching in an angry, rude or vengeful manner can constitute assault in Virginia,” says Chapman.

Invading one’s personal space: While there’s no law against trespassing in personal space, close contact and yelling in someone’s face could be disorderly conduct, says Chapman, escalating into allegations of being jostled. See unwanted touching above.

Using a bullhorn in someone’s face: Could violate the noise ordinance, and doing it aggressively in someone’s face in a way that interferes with her free speech potentially could be disorderly conduct.

Linking arms to prevent passage: If it’s restricting someone’s freedom and not letting them go, it could be abduction, says Chapman.

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Free-er speech: Controversial display prompts library policy changes

Some critics thought NOW’s sex-ed display in the library was too pro-choice and unsuitable for children. Staff photo

Nine months have passed since library patron Mike Powers voiced his concern over a sex-ed display in the front lobby of the main branch of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library. Following April’s public outcry, on January 25 the library’s board of trustees approved proposed changes to its public display policies that will clarify its stance on freedom of speech.

The display that offended Powers was sponsored by the Charlottesville National Organization of Women and featured books on sex education and birth control, along with the slogan “My Body, My Choice.” Powers says the display was not appropriate for all ages and argues that the display’s “prominent front-lobby positioning” at the central branch implied an endorsement by the library.

“[The display] had a political advocacy slogan and it was very confusing whether the library itself was endorsing a political advocacy position,” Powers says, “That, to me, didn’t seem to match the mission of the library.”

Central Library Manager Krista Farrell says that despite objections to the display, it did not violate the library’s previous display policy. However, she notes that the controversy “highlighted the need to make some adjustments and updates to the existing policy.”

Among the changes, the library plans to remove the phrases “balanced” and “age appropriate” from its policy because the meaning of these phrases is “open to interpretation” and caused disagreement between patrons and board members, says Farrell. The new proposed policy would say freedom of speech displays will be “unfettered” unless they contain obscene or defaming materials.

In addition to somewhat loosening the restrictions on freedom of speech displays, the library plans to enforce new rules on where these displays may be seen and require that each display have a sign indicating sponsorship.

“Realizing most library visitors do not come to the library to view displays,” the proposed policy reads, “the ‘Freedom of Speech’ display cases shall be located in areas generally used by adults at a minimum of 20 feet from the front door.”

Brian LaFontaine, president of the board of trustees, believes these changes will help to clarify the library’s role in offering an equal opportunity for freedom of expression, saying the library has “a responsibility to all of our patrons no matter their political, religious, cultural or social beliefs.”

LaFontaine adds, “We hope, if adopted, the new displays and handouts policy will offer the opportunity for educational displays that will support freedom of speech, a tenet all libraries are charged with, yet be sensitive to the concerns some of our patrons may have on subject matter or presentation.”

Although the process has taken longer than he imagined, Powers says that overall he is supportive of the proposed changes and thinks these changes will better identify the library as a neutral organization.

“It’s going to be more clear that these messages are from an outside organization,” Powers says. “If they feel it’s an important library function to provide a platform for free expression, then I think this is the best compromise.”