In a campus-wide email sent by Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson earlier this week, the Division of Student Affairs made a clarification of free speech policies, long-overdue.

Student Affairs’ email specified in exceptional detail where students can and cannot table, as well as explicating where students can hold protests for certain events. This is a clearer and more explicit layout of the way free speech works on campus, leaving little room for the past issues of wrongful university intervention. Also clearer is the method for directing complaints about issues of free speech.

In response to these improvements, fliers were posted in university classroom buildings including Healy Hall and the Rafik B. Hariri Building, stating “This building is not a ‘free speech’ zone,” presumably drawing attention to the prolonged problem that students cannot conduct protests in every campus space without police intervention.

Yet the expansions of free speech zones are reasonable for this moment in time. Students may protest in myriad new locations, yet specific places that have been designated as sacred — including and especially Healy Hall — still do not allow protests. Without antagonizing the Catholic community that wishes these sacred spaces like Gaston Hall or Dahlgren Quadrangle to remain free of any potentially offensive or anti-Catholic demonstrations, free speech is allowed in most other places on campus. Furthermore, Olson’s map specifically noted that in the public spaces designated, tabling is either allowed or prohibited, specifically to allow “safe egress.”

Perhaps in the future, the administration will consider further expanding these zones, and those students who are unsatisfied with the current reforms can still lead a protest in favor of more free speech. Now, at least, they can lead those protests in more places than ever before.