Protests and police on campus

[Wahoo Redux]

Context from the Guardian:

An analysis of 553 US campus demonstrations nationwide between 18 April and 3 May found that fewer than 20 resulted in any serious interpersonal violence or property damage, according to statistics from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled).

Over the same period, Acled documented at least 70 instances of forceful police intervention against US campus protests, which includes the arrest of demonstrators and the use of physical dispersal tactics, including the deployment of chemical agents, batons and other kinds of physical force.

So the lack of "serious interpersonal violence or property damage" potentially still allows blocking people from services and spaces, among other things. It also potentially allows all kinds of nasty name-calling and verbal harassment.
 

Frankly, I had the same thought.

And we shouldn't demonize the police for enforcing the law, even if they have to use force.  If anyone----students, professors, or anyone----is given a lawful order, they have to obey.  If they do not, the police are allowed to use proportional force to enforce the law.  I've watched the footage.  These are not cops walloping students with clubs as they did during the Chicago Democratic Convention in '68 or whatever.  These are wrestling matches and zip-ties and students (and the odd professor) being led from campus.

I acknowledge peoples' right to peacefully protest----but then one has to accept the consequences, which is part of the protest.

Ask 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?

[jimbogumbo]

This discussion is to me, bizarre. Only a handful of campuses had spaces that prevented students from getting services. And I'm sorry, having police with snipers (IU and OSU) is an amazing overreach even if no heads were bashed. If the Storm Front students were on the quad the cops should do nothing.

And marshwiggle, the name calling in the US would almost certainly be protected free speech in this instance.

[Hibush]

Ask 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.

[dismalist]

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.

Looks to me like many campus administrations acted not in haste, but took far too long to call in the cops. Negotiate with trespassers and those interfering with normal operations and the stakes get raised. Give an inch, and the demonstrators take a foot. Have your buildings occupied next.

But so long as glass is not broken during the occupation, the Guardian will call it peaceful protests. No, that's not how it works.

[jimbogumbo]

Looks to me like many campus administrations acted not in haste, but took far too long to call in the cops. Negotiate with trespassers and those interfering with normal operations and the stakes get raised. Give an inch, and the demonstrators take a foot. Have your buildings occupied next.

But so long as glass is not broken during the occupation, the Guardian will call it peaceful protests. No, that's not how it works.

[marshwiggle]

This discussion is to me, bizarre. Only a handful of campuses had spaces that prevented students from getting services. And I'm sorry, having police with snipers (IU and OSU) is an amazing overreach even if no heads were bashed. If the Storm Front students were on the quad the cops should do nothing.

And marshwiggle, the name calling in the US would almost certainly be protected free speech in this instance.

Would that include things like racial slurs? Would it include calling people who sympathize with some cause murderers? I'm not clear on the law regarding this sort of thing, but my impression is that those sorts of things, (especially racial slurs), usually seem to be taken pretty seriously with more than a shrug that says"Oh well, nothing we can do about it".

[jimbogumbo]

Looks to me like many campus administrations acted not in haste, but took far too long to call in the cops. Negotiate with trespassers and those interfering with normal operations and the stakes get raised. Give an inch, and the demonstrators take a foot. Have your buildings occupied next.

But so long as glass is not broken during the occupation, the Guardian will call it peaceful protests. No, that's not how it works.

Damn. Hit the wrong button.


Of course police should be called in when things are actually violent (UCLA) or a building is actually occupied (Portland State).

But dismalist...


What would you call "many"? I actually only know of three places where buildings were occupied. Everything else I've read about was outside, in public space.


I'm also curious for some examples from the non-Ivies. What I saw was militarized police being called out to secure what was essentially open space.



Not trespassing, and definitely not violent in the vast majority of instances. I think you (maybe) just don't like The Guardian.

[dismalist]

Looks to me like many campus administrations acted not in haste, but took far too long to call in the cops. Negotiate with trespassers and those interfering with normal operations and the stakes get raised. Give an inch, and the demonstrators take a foot. Have your buildings occupied next.

But so long as glass is not broken during the occupation, the Guardian will call it peaceful protests. No, that's not how it works.

Damn. Hit the wrong button.


Of course police should be called in when things are actually violent (UCLA) or a building is actually occupied (Portland State).

But dismalist...


What would you call "many"? I actually only know of three places where buildings were occupied. Everything else I've read about was outside, in public space.


I'm also curious for some examples from the non-Ivies. What I saw was militarized police being called out to secure what was essentially open space.



Not trespassing, and definitely not violent in the vast majority of instances. I think you (maybe) just don't like The Guardian.

I certainly do not like the Guardian!

The substance that's at stake is when can you break the law, which includes the property rights of the universities affected. Some want those property rights weakened, others want them to be exercised. We're arguing over ownership, as usual.

Put differently, the issue is not the issue. The issue is only the revolution.

As such, I don't give a shit how this turns out for any individual institution. We'll see how they fare afterwards.

[Wahoo Redux]

Ask 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.

Okay, but we are talking disrupting and occupying, albeit peacefully, and orders to disperse----not "hanging out."

Big difference. 

Edit: dismalist, maybe I am dense, but half the time I don't know what you are posting about.

[marshwiggle]

Of 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.

Given that on many campuses, students (and some faculty) have vociferously opposed certain speakers merely giving a talk in some room on campus (on the grounds of it making campus "unsafe") , to the point where the event had to be cancelled, it's ironic that these same people see big crowds yelling in public spaces on campus as not at all a concern for making campus "unsafe".

The inconsistency is breathtaking.

[Langue_doc]

Most of the students in the city, unlike their rich counterparts in institutions such as Columbia or NYU do not have the luxury of protesting or setting up tent encampments on campus as they are juggling jobs and their course work. Protests are seen as disruptive to their education as they interfere with the students' access to classrooms, libraries, and also dorms and dining rooms in some instances, but also prevent them from benefiting from the expensive tuition that they or their parents have paid the school. Many of the students I know don't have the income or the time to buy tents, get their food delivered, or spend days and nights living in tents or buildings on campus. Most of the protesters arrested at City College were outsiders.

New 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."

The protestors appear to be a small fraction of the enrolled students. During the graduation ceremonies at NYU, only a dozen or so were disruptive as opposed to the majority who just wanted to be a part of the commencement.

These protests have had no impact on the situation in Gaza. Protesting in front of the offices of the governor, who rushed to Israel to show her support, or the senator, also a staunch supporter of Israel would have been much more effective.

[spork]

[. . .]

These protests have had no impact

[. . . ]

They have succeeded in doing what Americans do best -- putting all the attention on themselves, rather than whatever cause du jour they espouse.

One of the most informative videos on the subject that I've seen.

[Wahoo Redux]

Spork speaks wisdom!

[Wahoo Redux]

 For whatever it is worth, got this in my email this morning:

Dear Wahoo,

"I've been teaching for 34 years and I've never seen anything remotely like this, the willingness to hurt people, the willingness to hurt me, the willingness to stick a police club in the ribs of an 82 year old, the willingness to beat students. I saw one student from UCLA, wiping the blood off his face in an interview. We are in scary times and I'm really grateful to be part of AAUP. I hope that we can as a national organization make a concerted effort to work on these issues and respond to them."

That's Annelise Orleck, whose arrest at a May 1 protest at Dartmouth College garnered significant press coverage. She's a professor of history and co-president of the Dartmouth AAUP chapter.

Annelise is just one of many AAUP members who've been fighting to ensure that academic freedom, free speech, and the right to protest are protected on campuses across the country, in the face of increasing crackdowns and violent repression.

Join the fight. Rejoin or join the AAUP today.

As we said in a recent statement,

The AAUP and its chapters defend the right to free speech and peaceful protest on university campuses, condemn the militarized response by institutional leaders to these activities, and vehemently oppose the politically motivated assault on higher education.
Our colleges and universities are places of free and open expression, inquiry, and debate. Even in sharp disagreement, our goal is communication in service of learning and understanding. The critical evaluation of different points of view and the questioning of even the most deeply held beliefs are essential to learning. So too is our students' right to protest and to express their political convictions.
It's not just words. You can find many resources on our website about campus speech rights. We've been talking to faculty about their experiences in the protests on our podcast AAUP Presents, as well as examining the history and people behind the current wave of political interference and crackdowns. We regularly address these issues in Academe, the AAUP's magazine. These are just some of the resources you get as an AAUP member—and now, thanks to our affiliation with the American Federation of Teachers, all AAUP members also have access to all of AFT's member benefits.

What's your role in all of this? Become a member to help support efforts to protect free inquiry in higher ed and ensure that higher ed can serve the common good. We'd love to have you as part of the one of the strongest organizations fighting for the future of higher ed.

In solidarity,
Mariah Quinn, AAUP's digital organizer

My response:

I don't think these protests are doing Palestine, our colleges, our students, or our police any favors.  We should not demonize the police for enforcing the law.  We need to be more mature than this and to move past the protest milieu of the '70s, which is what this is. 

Thank you, Wahoo Redux

[marshwiggle]

For whatever it is worth, got this in my email this morning:

We regularly address these issues in Academe, the AAUP's magazine. These are just some of the resources you get as an AAUP member—and now, thanks to our affiliation with the American Federation of Teachers, all AAUP members also have access to all of AFT's member benefits.

What's your role in all of this? Become a member to help support efforts to protect free inquiry in higher ed and ensure that higher ed can serve the common good. We'd love to have you as part of the one of the strongest organizations fighting for the future of higher ed.

In solidarity,
Mariah Quinn, AAUP's digital organizer

Sounds like more about marketing than discussing the issues involved.
"BUT WAIT; THERE'S MORE!"

If you're old enough to remember, picture it being read in the voice of a K-Tel commercial.