Quote from: Langue_doc on Today at 06:47:10 AM[. . .]
These protests have had no impact
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Quote from: AmLitHist on Today at 06:10:31 AM[. . .]
The running joke among long-time faculty here is to reminisce about the truly wonderful food we used to get at every event--even things like academic council meetings: in-house gourmet cookies, taco bars and salad bars, gourmet sandwiches etc. Nowadays we're lucky if we get warm tap water and a package of stale saltines. (We usually don't get anything.)
QuoteNew York Police Department leaders and Mayor Eric Adams have blamed much of the disturbance at protests on "outside agitators," people with no connection to the colleges at which they are held. Mr. Boudreau also agreed with this sentiment. Protesters countered that many are students, alumni and members of the staff or the faculty of the City University of New York system, where City College is the flagship institution.
Among those taken to jail was Achmat Akkad, who lives in Harlem and is a graduate student at John Jay College, another CUNY institution. He learned about the demonstrations at City College from a post on the social media app X at 9:46 p.m. by the activist group Within Our Lifetime, which read in part: "Brave protesters are digging in and surrounded by NYPD. WE NEED BODIES AND NUMBERS AT CCNY RIGHT NOW."
"I literally just finished dinner and walked across the street," Mr. Akkad said. "Calling people 'outside agitators' makes it sound like Palestinians from Gaza came here to start an uprising." Mr. Akkad said he had been standing outside the campus when he was tackled and handcuffed. He was given a summons for disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor.
Most of the campus is open to the surrounding neighborhood, and demonstrators were free to wander among its buildings for days. But by Tuesday afternoon, with most student protesters camped in the heart of campus, City College security officers had erected barriers at nearby intersections and sidewalks, Mr. Boudreau said, sealing off the quad. Anyone who wished to leave was escorted out, he added.
The encampment was mostly quiet until Tuesday evening, when about 300 other pro-Palestinian demonstrators arrived from outside the campus, followed by dozens of police officers. The two groups of protesters, separated by temporary barriers with a line of police officers between them, fed off each other. At one point in the evening, some protesters lit road flares, their red sparks and flames licking the underside of a City College archway.
"If these were our students, they never would have done that," Mr. Boudreau said of the flares. "We have a tradition of managing protests in a way that allows protesters to have full freedom to express themselves and exert pressure on us, the administration."
Also on Tuesday evening, protesters inside the campus sprinted away from the barricades and broke into an administration building, where they smashed computers in the student financial aid office, Mr. Boudreau said. The protesters tried to barricade themselves inside the building but were removed by campus security officers after about 10 minutes.
Of the 31 people arrested inside the administration building, one was a faculty member at the college, and another was a student, Mr. Boudreau said. The rest had no known connection to the college. (Prosecutors charged only 22 people in connection with the break-in, but it was not clear from court records how many were affiliated with the college; the reason for the discrepancy was not clear.)
"I'm very glad that they were not students at City, because that means they won't be suspended, thrown out or put in jail," said Ms. Wallace, the emeritus English professor. "That's the best news I've heard all day."