BUZZ
Students across political spectrum unite in calling for non-interference policy from administrators
Carnegie Mellon University students from across the political aisle recently united in calling for a new free speech policy for a campus landmark, The Fence.
On Thursday, President Farnam Jahanian refused to adopt the students’ recommendations, but promised to pass them along to the university’s trustees, The Tartan student newspaper reports.
The Fence is a landmark dedicated to open expression on the private, Pennsylvania campus. Students are allowed to paint messages or artwork on the fence, within certain limits.
Students recently organized a petition, signed by more than 500 people, calling on the university to adopt a non-interference policy for The Fence, and delivered it to Jahanian on Thursday.
The policy would prohibit “any administrator from painting over or removing student expression on The Fence, except in the rare cases already covered by tradition, such as profanity or unambiguous threats,” according to the petition.
Carnegie Mellon’s Young Americans for Liberty chapter started the petition, but many other student organizations supported it, including College Democrats, College Republicans, the Muslim Student Association, and two LGBTQ groups, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“Very rarely do you ever see, especially in this political climate, something that progressives, libertarians, Republicans, Democrats and non-affiliated students can all get behind,” YAF chapter leader Anthony Cacciato told the newspaper.
Progressive student Ilyas Khan helped deliver the petition to the president’s office Thursday, alongside Cacciato and other libertarian students, the newspaper reports.
“Right now in America, there is a sense that if you fall on the left of the political spectrum, you are the natural enemy of the right, and if you fall on the right, you are the natural enemy of the left,” Khan said. “Today, we are proving that is untrue, because the real enemy that we are facing right now is the stripping of our rights.”
The impetus for the petition was a message that administrators painted over in July 2025 during President Donald Trump’s visit, the Post-Gazette reports:
Last July, during Mr. Trump’s visit to a CMU-hosted artificial intelligence summit, an anonymous group painted The Fence to read, “No rapists on campus.”
University staff painted over the structure and temporarily closed it. At the time, Mr. Jahanian said The Fence was not “simply a blank canvas,” and raised concerns about “polarized, one-sided messaging” in recent years. Five days after its closure, though, CMU reopened it without changes to the previous rules.
The elite institution then convened the working group to consider The Fence’s role at CMU and find ways to ensure it would remain on campus while simultaneously “addressing the realities of modern society and the needs of our diverse campus community.” That group’s recommendations will be ready in the upcoming weeks, Mr. Jahanian said.
On an Instagram post, Jahanian thanked the students for speaking up about the matter.
“CMU has a long and proud history of open, respectful dialogue, and this tradition matters, ensuring that many voices — and not just the voices of a few — can be heard,” he wrote.
The Carnegie Mellon Student Government is in charge of cleaning and maintaining The Fence, and only students are allowed to paint it, according to the university’s website.
“Serving as a student-centered space for free expression and community, The Fence has brought the CMU community together for more than 100 years,” the website states.
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