What do you mean? As far as I am aware, you only need to ask somebody to leave your property, and if they don't leave then the police will come and take them away for you.

> Free and equal access to private property has been bandied about for decades

There is no such thing unless the property is something like a restaurant or hotel and you discriminate based on a protected characteristic (race, mostly).

There are also exceptions for things like beach access.

PS: The law is all about edge cases if you don't know the specifics you really have no idea what's legal most of the time.

The law is mostly about the general rules. Legal analysis tends to be about edge cases, only because those tend to be the ones that are interesting to fight about. The general rule is that you can pretty much arbitrarily revoke license to use your private property.

Vis-a-vis beach access: the exception arises in that context because the waters of a state and all submerged land and land up to the mean high tide line are public property. Thus, while you remain free to revoke license to use your property arbitrarily, you can't use that to unfairly monopolize access to public property.

Or university.

Having attached earlobes is not a protected characteristic, nor (more relevantly) is breaking the rules of the establishment.

You're reaching.

You're the one who is reaching, by bringing up very specific exceptions (Civil Rights Act Title II) exceptions to the general right to exclude on private property. That's one of the most fundamental aspects of private property: the right to exclude.

Is MIT actually the kind of private property you're talking about?

What do you mean "the kind of private property"? Private property is private property. MIT is a private university and its campus buildings and its campus network is private property.

The fact that it's an educational institution doesn't make its property any less private. IIRC, the fact that MIT is engaged in interstate commerce with the public brings it within the domain of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, but those laws carry only very specific limitations: MIT can't refuse someone access solely based on their: race, color, religion, or national origin, and must make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. Those regulations on the use of MIT's private property don't make the property any less private than any other such regulations, nor do they in any way prejudice MIT's rights to control access to their property for any other reason.

Isn't the private property thing a bit of a distraction anyway? Would things change if MIT was a public university?

You can't mix up "public property" with "private property of a public entity." The former is something like a river--it's public property and you're entitled to swim in it and cannot be excluded arbitrarily. But the latter is the same as private property in any other hands. To the extent that anything would change (and I don't think anything would), it would not be because the property rights are in any way different, but because the actions of public universities are "government action" and might be constrained for other reasons.

Yeah, ok, makes sense. Thanks.