This year’s Student Handbook includes several changes from last year’s edition, including policy changes that disallow chalk writing on the steps of Middle College, set more rigid standards for student demonstrations and define what qualifies as graffiti.
A link to the updated 2026–27 Student Handbook was emailed to students Aug. 31. by the Dean of Students’ office. In accordance with its new guidelines, chalking is no longer permitted on “the steps, ramp, or red brick area” of Middle College, and all chalk writing must have a listed take down date within two weeks of its initial writing. Both of these changes come as clear responses to last school year’s protest against the housing price increase, which, in addition to a sit-in at Middle College, saw chalk messages around campus used as a form of protest.
Also seemingly in response to those protests is an addition to the section on student demonstrations. Protests are now prohibited “inside academic and administrative buildings” (thereby including Middle College), and may not obstruct emergency entrances and exits to buildings.
A new note on page 114 defines graffiti as “any unauthorized writing, drawing or marking created on any campus structure, public or private,” and specifies that this applies whether the graffiti is made using temporary or permanent materials. The Dean of Students’ office sent an email on Sep. 3 to draw special notice to this updated definition, implicitly relating it to the recent incident when racist graffiti was written in paint marker on the wall of the podcast room.
The subsection on Housing Policy, which lists various housing-related policies and resources, now lists the Residential Experience Advisory Committee, or REAC, which was created in response to the housing protest. The committee is described as “a point of contact and conversation between campus community members and the residential and student life staff… Points of conversation may include service offerings, spending priorities, strategic direction, and compliance concerns.”
Also according to the subsection on Housing, first-year students in their second semester are no longer permitted to live in special interest houses, fraternities or sororities without permission from the Director of Residence Life. In practice this change only affects special interest housing, since the 25–26 edition included a requirement for second-term first years to have approval from either the Director of Residence Life or the Dean of Students before moving into Greek life housing.
Lastly, the Housing Policy subsection has a new heading: “Continuing Student Enrollment, Housing, and Accounting Holds.” This part of the Student Handbook contains information on tuition deadlines and the process of resolving Accounting/Enrollment Holds (which occur when payments to the college are overdue, and restrict students from participating in classes or living on-campus). This addition is not marked in the table of contents.
The subsection on Political Activity now contains a note that “willful interference with any sanctioned campus activity, including political debate, forums and similar programming, in a manner aimed at preventing such activities from occurring may face disciplinary action[.]”
The heading Gender Neutral/LGBTQIA Housing now makes reference to offering housing for students “regardless of sex or gender identity,” instead of just “regardless of sex.” It also now refers to “legal” instead of “biological” sex.
The list of criteria for when the college classifies an activity as hazing now contains, as its third item, the following definition: “Requiring, coercing, or pressuring any person to participate in an activity, ritual, tradition, or conduct that humiliates, degrades, intimidates, ostracizes, endangers, abuses, or compels unwanted acts or duties, particularly where the activity is unrelated to the legitimate purposes of the organization or group[.]”
A note on page 53 regarding the college’s rules for inviting speakers emphasizes that “the College encourages campus groups to invite speakers with a wide range of perspectives. … Community members and visitors may not suppress others’ speech by obstructing, shouting down, or otherwise preventing them from being heard.”
The Student Handbook no longer opens with the Statement of Student Culture as it did in the 2025–26 edition; instead, subsection A of Section I now sets student responsibility for “reading, understanding, and following all rules, policies, standards, and expectations expressed within the Student Handbook and all other campus publications.” It is still labelled as the Student Statement of Culture in the table of contents.
Relatively insubstantial changes include the following: some instances of “Residential Life” have been changed to “Residence Life”; “Portal” has been changed to “MyBeloit”; some instances of “his/her” have been replaced with “their”; two numbered headings with longer sets of information — the locations of on-campus emergency phones and the security camera guidelines — now contain links to those guidelines online instead; “AI tools” are no longer explicitly referenced on page 13; page 49 includes the statute definition of hazing; REAC has replaced the “Residential Life Committee of BSC” on page 113; there are additional clarifications regarding RAVE alerts on page 88; and page 77 now contains a list of common fines and fees for housing damages.
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