Student activists at Northern Arizona University, members of the Flagstaff Students for a Democratic Society chapter, are facing harassment and threats of suspension for holding anti-ICE rallies this past spring. One leader, Sarah Rogala, is facing a second round of conduct hearings heading towards suspension. Another leader, Claire Wagoner, has been trespassed by campus police and is threatened with arrest if she appears on campus.
We wholeheartedly condemn this violation of their First Amendment rights to free speech and the right to assembly.
Flagstaff SDS came into existence in January 2026. By February and March, they were holding rallies of up to 400 people each, first demanding a sanctuary campus and then denouncing the construction of a new ICE office across from NAU. These rallies culminated in a 200-student sit-in at the president’s office, spanning dozens of student organizations. These demands clearly reflected the will of the student body. By mid-April, the administration hit both Rogala and Wagoner with bogus conduct hearings and threats of suspension.
A student group like SDS, which takes a fighting approach to organizing, is a special target for administrators. Justin Mallett, the vice president of NAU Center for “Inclusive Excellence and Access” and a stooge for administration, was heard saying, “I’ll be damned before I let SDS become an official student organization.”
The retaliation bears an eerie resemblance to similar anti-free speech policies enacted across the country. In Florida, long-standing SDS chapters that have been around for over a decade have leaders facing potential suspensions for even witnessing the act of people passing out fliers, such as at the University of North Florida and Florida State University.
Student leaders at University of Texas Austin have been suspended for protesting Trump’s compact, which sought to bribe universities to wipe out any ethnic cultural organizations, programs such as women’s and gender studies, and any course that addresses racism or oppression. Students in Louisiana have been hit hard with constant conduct charges, even for simply for giving speeches about Palestine in other parts of the city, including off campus.
These anti-protest policies take many forms: so-called “time, place and manner” policies at schools such as Cal Poly Humboldt in California, where any expression-related activity has to be approved by the university; bald-faced criminalization, where youth, such as Claire Wagoner in Arizona and SDS leaders in Tampa, Florida, are trespassed from campus and told that campus police will arrest them if they appear; policies setting strict limits on the ability to meet, give out flyers, or hold protests where students can actually see them; and more.
These policies began to appear everywhere at the end of the encampment for Gaza movement in 2024. They have become a norm across campuses and are wielded against protests of ICE and of Trump.
University presidents, such as NAU President Cruz Rivera, want everyone to think that there is nothing wrong in the U.S. and nothing to protest. They lie. They side with the Trump administration for chump change. They want to force students to look the other way as ICE strives to deport record numbers of immigrants and sets up an office across from campus. They will trample on students so that ICE can have free rein over students and staff at NAU.
So far, the brave student organizers in SDS will not let them, and neither will we. We condemn NAU’s violation of Rogala and Wagoner’s First Amendment rights to free speech and the freedom of assembly. We call on all progressives to do the same. We assert our right to protest on campus, and we will not let it go without a fight.
And when we fight, we win!
