Seven Tulane University students have reportedly received emails from the Office of Student Conduct stating that they are under investigation after participating in an off-campus protest organized by the suspended student organization, Students for a Democratic Society, according to the organization’s Instagram.
On March 11, around 40 protesters gathered on Freret Street to protest the Trump administration’s orders against student protests, Tulane’s recent renaming of the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, the arrest of Mahmoud Kalil — a student who organized Columbia University’s pro-Palestine protests — and in support of Palestine.
The protesters marched down Freret Street to Calhoun Street and ended in front of Loyola University on St. Charles Avenue, stopping traffic along the way. Over 20 Tulane University Police Department officers were present.
“This was an off-campus protest … always in the street or on the sidewalk or the neutral ground,” sophomore Atticus Pratt, who participated in the protest, said. “That day I was marshaling; I would sit on the outside of the march and keep people from going on private property, keep cars from entering the march, control traffic, basically making sure everyone is safe.”
The protest was posted on Instagram under the account Together United SDS, formerly known as Tulane University SDS, which was a registered student organization until it was suspended last April after it helped organize an encampment in front of Gibson Hall that led to 14 arrests and several student suspensions.
Tulane sends warnings to students
In January, some students received warning letters from the Office of Student Conduct stating that due to the organization’s suspension, involvement in activities associated with SDS is a violation of the Code of Student Conduct.
“We fundamentally respect the right to protest,” Tulane spokesperson Mike Strecker said in a statement to The Hullabaloo. “However, students must be held accountable for behavior that violates university conduct policies.”
“About a month or so ago, I received an email that said I had to leave the organization SDS because that did not align with the Code of Conduct,” Pratt said. “It was very vaguely worded. They did not cite any specific charges that could be brought against me. They simply said, ‘You are a part of this off-campus organization, SDS, and we do not allow that; stop now, or you will be liable for conduct charges.’”
Violating the Student Code of Conduct could result in either minor or major matter investigations. Major matter investigations could lead to suspension or expulsion from Tulane.
Now, allegedly, seven students are under investigation because of their attendance at the March 11 protest, which violated the initial warning from January.
Students to be investigated
However, some students under investigation said they never received warning emails.
“I got a letter that said that I was previously warned that all activity associated with SDS had to cease; I don’t recall getting a warning like that,” senior Rory MacDonald said. “I was told that I was failing to comply with university officials, that I was participating in disruptive conduct and the third charge is that I have joint responsibility, that I colluded to violate the code of conduct.”
MacDonald is currently suspended from Tulane due to participation in the encampment last spring and will continue to be suspended in the fall. Now, MacDonald could face more consequences on top of the suspension.
“People in the faculty have told me that expulsion is on the table, which I think is really ridiculous,” MacDonald said. “It’s really concerning; it sounds like this sort of bureaucratic argument that Tulane is making about the name of our organization operating off campus is maybe going to mean that I won’t get my degree. But they seem really intent to die on the hill.”
Fifth-year student Preston Seligman received the March email that he is under investigation. Seligman said the email stated that his involvement in the March 11 protest did not fall under Tulane’s freedom of speech policy because it was organized by a suspended organization, SDS.
“They just said, Students for a Democratic Society in general, they didn’t give a chapter or anything, which is crazy; that’s a national organization,” Seligman said. “Moreover, the protest was totally off campus, which is really what shocked me about it.”
Pratt said they thought the warning email was “just fear-mongering.”
“My response to that original email was that they’re doing this because they know they don’t have any legal basis to prosecute us for off-campus political speech … So when they actually followed through with it, I was definitely surprised,” Pratt said.
Tulane under federal investigation
Tulane is currently under two federal investigations for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for its handling of campus antisemitism last year and for its partnership with the PhD Project.
MacDonald said they think the student investigations are Tulane’s response to the Trump administration’s recent threats towards colleges to crack down on protesters.
“If [Tulane’s] strategy is to give up everything to the Trump administration and go after any students who speak out against that, that’s not going to work,” MacDonald said.
“This is a threat to free speech,” MacDonald said. “What we saw today with these new conduct investigations going out is that Tulane doesn’t want students to say anything about what they’re doing to comply with Trump’s racist agenda or about what the U.S. government is doing.”
In a recent demand from the Trump administration, attorneys working on the civil rights investigations were told to collect the names and nationalities of college students who “might have harassed Jewish students or faculty.”
Student escorted out of LBC by TUPD
Last Monday, the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life was evacuated after TUPD received notice of an abandoned backpack with a note attached. The note criticized the university for renaming its Office of EDI to the Office of Academic Excellence and Opportunity after threats to federal funding from the Trump administration.
“I forgot my bag on a couch in the student center, something I and many students do very often,” junior Cameron McLaren said at a press conference organized by SDS in front of Gibson Hall last Wednesday. “Said seating area happened to be near an ongoing admissions event. My sign threatened nothing except the university’s wallets. TUPD arrested me without any evidence and coerced me into interrogation after they had already determined my backpack was, in fact, just a backpack with my school supplies and not a bomb.”
“They read me my Miranda rights, but when I initially exercised my right to remain silent, they threatened to tell the school administration essentially that I had intended to leave a bomb,” McLaren said at the conference. “This is a gross violation of the Fifth Amendment.”
Strecker could only confirm that the student was “detained for questioning” at the time of this publication.
“I was shocked that a Tulane University student was handcuffed and taken out of a building on campus, their own campus, without some excessive or violent provocation,” Latin American studies professor Justin Wolfe said.
After McLaren was detained on Monday, around 45 students put signs on their backpacks on Thursday that called out Tulane’s renaming of the AEO Office and showed solidarity with McLaren.
“My backpack said, ‘never the audacious; protect DEI,’” junior Sabine Greeson said, a play on Tulane’s Always the Audacious fundraising campaign. “Tulane isn’t being very audacious in rolling back the Office of EDI and closing OMA and OSGD; that’s definitely not an audacious response because they’re not standing up to the fascist regime.”
The Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Office of Gender and Sexual Diversity were both dissolved and moved into the Carolyn Barber-Pierre Center for Intercultural Life this month.
“The school is clearly interested in nothing else except keeping their cash flow going, and they will suppress anyone who dares to exercise their First Amendment right to condemn them,” McLaren said at the conference.
