When the students at the University of Puerto Rico gathered to protest an $800 hike in school fees in December, the state Supreme Court ordered them to do so outside the school gates.

Ana Guadalupe, the rector at the university's largest branch in Rio Piedras, had declared a moratorium on all student expression on campus and warned that any protests on university grounds would result in arrest. So students demonstrated in front of the university tower on campus and a circumscribed "Free Speech Zone" on Ponce de Léon Avenue starting Dec. 14.