An open letter sent by the executive committee of the Berkeley Initiative for Free Inquiry (BIFI) to UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons and UCPD Chief Yogananda Pittman, regarding the November 10, 2025 Turning Point USA event.
Dear Chancellor Lyons and Chief Pittman,
As faculty dedicated to promoting free inquiry at UC Berkeley, we write 1) to express our appreciation for campus efforts to protect free expression associated with the November 10 Turning Point USA event and 2) to urge that you ensure that charges of felony vandalism are not brought against the students who allegedly attached posters to Sather Gate in protest of the event. We write this letter as part of our mission to “ensure that university time, place, and manner restrictions, as well as policies on bullying, harassment, and discrimination, are implemented consistently and even-handedly.”
The success in hosting a controversial event
Unfortunately, several local groups, including one Berkeley student group, organized a coordinated attempt to prevent the Turning Point event from occurring as scheduled. Demonstrations against the event featured harassment of attendees, including one alleged assault. These actions are antithetical to the principles of an intellectually vibrant university, which ought to be able to host speakers espousing any political viewpoint without needing a security escort.
While we lament the vein of illiberalism that makes security measures necessary, we applaud the administration and police for devising and executing a security plan that allowed the event to proceed. And we urge our community to recommit to teaching students that challenging ideas should be engaged through argument, not banished through harassment or force.
The pre-event arrests
The night before the event, several students were arrested for felony vandalism, for allegedly gluing 28 posters to Sather Gate on behalf of the aforementioned student group. Based on the facts available to us, we urge you to ask that local officials refrain from bringing charges of felony vandalism, which appear disproportionate to the offense and would imperil these students’ futures.
We acknowledge that the university has a legitimate interest in regulating the time, place, and manner of expressive activity, and that free speech does not grant students the right to disrupt events or deface university property without consequence. Indeed, as the TPUSA event exemplified, vigorous enforcement by the university is sometimes required to defend the expressive rights of unpopular speakers from efforts to abrogate those rights.
However, just as underenforcement would undercut free speech by ceding the public square to vigilante censors, overenforcement carries risks of its own. Time, place, and manner rules are not always crisply defined, and most community members have imperfect knowledge of them. As such, an administrative policy of punishing rule violations with maximal severity could cause many to conclude that engaging in expressive activity on campus is not worth the risk. We note that the arrested students’ alleged activity in this case was expressive and, as far as we are aware, left no permanent damage.
The UC Policy on Student Conduct and Discipline and the Berkeley Code of Student Conduct provide alternative, educationally-oriented approaches to address student misconduct. In light of these well thought-out approaches, we respectfully urge your office to request that the pending criminal charges of felony vandalism be withdrawn, and that the matter be adjudicated through the University’s established student conduct processes. If the students did indeed glue the posters or cause other damage, they ought to compensate the campus for it. Regular student discipline and compensation for the damages is consistent with the University’s obligation to enforce rules neutrally and maintains an appropriate distinction between regular student misconduct and criminalization, which ought to be reserved for more serious offenses.
With regards,
Executive Committee, Berkeley Initiative for Free Inquiry