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."
Quote from: secundem_artem on May 15, 2024, 02:35:40 PMI've posted it in another thread, but 1-2 year's salary? What Daddy Warbucks College are you folks working at? In the past, Artem U has offered a bag of chips. And if you really complain, they'll throw in a pack of gum. Seriously, the crap offers they've made to date would only be of interest to those given a terminal diagnosis by their physician with a 3 month life expectancy.
Quote from: jimbogumbo on May 15, 2024, 03:20:11 PMOf course police should be called in when things are actually violent (UCLA) or a building is actually occupied (Portland State).
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Not trespassing, and definitely not violent in the vast majority of instances. I think you (maybe) just don't like The Guardian.
Quote from: bio-nonymous on May 14, 2024, 07:32:08 AM[. . .]
the department where someone takes that option would lose that faculty line! So, it kind of screwed your colleagues over.
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Quote from: Hibush on May 15, 2024, 01:00:29 PMQuote from: Wahoo Redux on May 15, 2024, 11:04:24 AMAsk ourselves: if these were registered students who were members of Storm Front peacefully occupying a campus but refusing to leave after lawfully ordered to, what would we have the cops do?
Jusrisdictions vary as far as what city cops can do. In some places, if registered students are peacefully hanging out in a public space on campus, an order to leave would not be lawful. Campus administration needs to follow whatever due process and regulations apply to their campus. Some seem to have gotten it wrong by jumping in haste.