Montana State students protest border wall at career fair, defy admin attempt to intimidate

Bozeman, MT – On October 30, members of Students for a Democratic Society at Montana State University surrounded the booth of Barnard Construction at MSU’s fall career fair. Students held signs decrying Barnard, a Bozeman-based construction company, for receiving a multi-billion-dollar contract to build the Trump administration’s border wall in the Big Bend national park.

One sign read, “Barnard’s border wall construction has high costs to the environment and immigrants, and diminishing returns,” while another read, “Border wall construction has already had destructive impacts on the Big Bend national park.”

This protest occurred in the context of what SDS described as MSU trying to “Intimidate student free speech.” According to a statement put out by SDS hours after the protest, the day before, MSU’s Dean of Students Matt Caires called SDS leadership into a meeting where he told them, any “social activism inside the career fair will be considered disruptive behavior.”

In their statement SDS said, “This [Caire’s statement] directly contradicts MSU’s written policies, which state that a campus official must ‘reasonably determine’ that conduct ‘substantially interferes’ with a university event.” SDS went on to say, “By threatening students, MSU has shown that it has made a pre-determination that any conduct SDS would engage in would be ‘disruptive’, before actually seeing the conduct itself.”

In an article published by MSU’s student newspaper The Exponent, Caires stated, “I never said anything [like] that ‘If you do this, you will get that.’” However, an audio recording of SDS’s meeting with Dean Caires provided by the students records Matt Caires stating explicitly, “I’m in good faith warning you, if you do that [protest inside the career fair], you’ll be charged with – you’ll be removed, and then charged with a conduct code violation.”

Despite SDS carrying on with their protest as planned, no students were removed or given conduct code violations. In their statement, SDS commented on this, “It is clear to us that if our protest did actually violate the Code of Conduct, MSU would have enforced it. Knowing that we were within our rights, MSU did not do so. This makes it even more troubling that the dean of students had attempted to intimidate students out of protesting.”

SDS finished their statement saying, “We wholeheartedly condemn this behavior by MSU admin and will continue to stand for our right to free speech. Defend campus free speech! No border wall!”

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