TIL I got a campus free speech group kicked off our quad for handing out 300 tiny rubber ducks with candidate names on them

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So last semester at Kent State, me and a few buddies in the Young Voters Club thought we found the most harmless way to get people to a debate night we were hosting in the student center. We bought 300 little rubber ducks off a party supply site, wrote each candidate's name on the bottom in Sharpie (150 for each side, because we wanted it fair), and set up a table on the quad with a sign that just said 'pick a duck, come argue about it Thursday at 7.' For two hours it was honestly hilarious, kids were grabbing ducks, taking selfies, one guy started a duck race down a rain gutter, and we handed out maybe 120 flyers for the debate. Then a staffer from the student involvement office walked up with a clipboard and told us we broke the free speech policy because the ducks counted as 'unapproved promotional materials' and handing them out without a registered event permit made it an 'unregulated distribution.' I tried to point out that the whole point of the quad is that you can hand stuff out there, and she said yes, paper flyers are fine, but 'objects with messaging' need a permit, which is a distinction I still do not understand. They shut the table down, made us bag up the remaining ducks, and the debate night got cancelled anyway because nobody wanted to show up after the duck thing blew up in the group chat. The wild part is the free speech org that was supposed to defend us spent three weeks arguing about whether ducks are speech instead of just filing the paperwork, so we never got the permit, we never got an apology, and I now own 180 rubber ducks sitting in a box in my closet. Has anyone else run into a campus rule where handing out objects is treated totally differently than handing out paper, or is Kent State just weird about this?

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