Bellevue College YAL protested the free speech zones on campus. The goal was to inflate a “free speech ball,” a seven-foot wide white beach ball that students could write whatever they wanted on it, exercising their First Amendment rights, as well as a petition to end the free speech zones on campus. “Within ten minutes, another faculty member came over and started taking pictures and asking questions and within minutes afterwards, campus security was on us. They were rather uncouth and rather threatening to say the least,”John Richardson stated. One of the students started to film the interaction, until directed not to by a public safety officer and the student “felt so threatened and afraid that he did.”

The BC legal team agreed with the ADF lawyer, and said that free speech zones are not exclusively the only place that students can exercise their right to free speech, and the team would take actions to train BC staff appropriately.