Blog: President Schmidly on (Un)Occupy Albuquerque

After a morn­ing sit­ting in front of Scholes Hall, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of (Un)Occupy Albu­querque met with UNM Pres­i­dent David Schmidly this after­noon to dis­cuss the university’s deci­sion to not renew the  pro­test­ers’ per­mit for another week. Following his meet­ing with the (Un)Occupy Albu­querque rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Pres­i­dent Schmidly met with uni­ver­sity law enforce­ment and mem­bers of the UNM admin­is­tra­tion to dis­cuss the per­mit exten­sion request. After these meet­ings, Pres­i­dent Schmidly decided not to grant the per­mit exten­sion request.

Pres­i­dent Schmidly’s com­plete state­ment is below:

This after­noon I had the priv­i­lege of meet­ing with two rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the (un)Occupy Albu­querque protest group to dis­cuss the University’s deci­sion to not approve their per­mit after 25 con­tin­u­ous days of occu­pancy on UNM cam­pus. The rise in increas­ingly threat­en­ing and vio­lent inci­dents has raised our level of safety concerns.

I whole­heart­edly sup­port their rights to freely express them­selves and peace­fully assem­ble.  I also must ensure the safety of the entire Uni­ver­sity and uphold the University’s pol­icy regard­ing free­dom of expres­sion and dis­sent, which artic­u­lates the University’s com­mit­ment to “tol­er­ate all peace­ful speech activ­i­ties car­ried out upon the cam­pus unless those activ­i­ties destroy or mate­ri­ally dam­age prop­erty, mate­ri­ally dis­rupt other legit­i­mate Uni­ver­sity activ­i­ties or cre­ate a sub­stan­tial health or safety hazard.”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Uni­ver­sity have been in con­tact with var­i­ous mem­bers of the group through­out the past month. While there has been dia­logue and a will­ing­ness from many pro­test­ers to com­ply with var­i­ous aspects of their per­mits, the pro­longed and unique nature of this protest and con­tin­u­ous encamp­ment have evolved beyond the capac­ity for either the pro­test­ers or the Uni­ver­sity to ensure the safety of the par­tic­i­pants as well as our stu­dents, employ­ees and visitors.

In con­sul­ta­tion with cam­pus law enforce­ment and Uni­ver­sity lead­er­ship, we have decided to uphold our deci­sion to not grant another per­mit after the cur­rent per­mit expires Tues­day, Oct. 25 at 10 p.m.