In another dramatic campus confrontation, hundreds of police officers in riot gear converged on a pro-Palestinian encampment at UC Irvine, resulting in scores of arrests over the course of several hours.
University officials said they acted after a group of activists briefly occupied and barricaded a nearby university building on Wednesday, escalating a protest that administrators had previously tolerated for weeks.
Related posts
By dark Wednesday, police had herded the demonstrators away, destroyed the encampment, and detained 47 protesters, including some faculty members.
However, the action did little to soothe campus divisions over the protests and the university’s handling of them.
UCI joins numerous other California colleges, including UCLA, UC San Diego, Cal Poly Humboldt, and USC, in utilizing a mass police force to disperse encampments. Protesters at UC Riverside and UC Berkeley agreed to evacuate their camps in exchange for concessions from the universities.
A UCI representative stated that most of the arrested individuals faced charges for failure to disperse, while some also faced trespassing charges. Late Thursday, UCI announced that the 47 individuals included 26 students, two workers, and 19 individuals not affiliated with the university. The university authorities did not respond to concerns regarding whether students or faculty might face further disciplinary punishment.
UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman claimed he was “brokenhearted” at the end of the day, noting that he had been “prepared to allow a peaceful encampment to exist on campus without resorting to police intervention,” despite the arrangement breaching policies and upsetting many members of the community.
Gillman said in a statement late Wednesday, “It was terrible to see how [the encampment protesters] would dramatically alter the situation in a way that was a direct assault on the rights of other students and the university mission.”
He stated the demonstrators chose to “transform a manageable situation that did not require police intervention into a situation that required a different response.”
“I never wanted that,” Gillman explained.
Many protestors, however, saw the forceful response as unwarranted, chanting “Peaceful protest!” at times, while others believed the police presence raised new safety concerns. One global studies professor exclaimed, “Shame on them! “Shame on them!” as officers dragged them away.
On Thursday, UCI declared that all classes would be virtual, and that workers should also work remotely.
Despite the arrests and the presence of up to 200 helmeted officers wielding batons, the scene at UCI was calmer than some of the recent confrontations on college campuses across the country, in which protesters hurled heavy objects at officers, police fired “less-lethal” rounds at demonstrators, and multiple protesters were injured.
Times reporters reported a few skirmishes between protesters and police near the encampment’s barrier, as well as the throwing of at least one water bottle at officers, as policemen converged on demonstrators at UCI, but these incidents seemed isolated. Police scooped up and hauled away a man who had a bleeding nose.
Thomas Vasich, a spokesman for UCI, reports that one protester and five police officers suffered injuries.
According to university officials, a group of protestors arrived on campus at 2:30 p.m. and “began surrounding and ultimately barricaded” the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall, a huge indoor amphitheater. The university reports that only a few members of the group entered the building.
Several pro-Palestinian Instagram accounts livestreamed the building takeover. The recordings depicted a chaotic scenario in which students dressed in kaffiyehs dashed to and from the area outside the lecture hall, erecting a wooden barrier, tents, signs, and other stuff.
Some students claim that the institution suspended members of the protest negotiating team, which led to Wednesday’s action. “They forced our hand,” said a student who declined to reveal her name out of fear of reprisal from the university.
The event also commemorated the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” which refers to the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes during the 1948 conflict that preceded Israel’s establishment.
Protesters at UCI held posters and circulated social media posts referencing the Nakba on Wednesday, while similar escalations invoking the day’s history occurred at other California campuses; some law enforcement officials speculated that this indicated a level of cooperation among activist groups. At UC Santa Cruz, a group of protestors blocked a major crossroads near its ongoing encampment, and at UC Berkeley, a group occupied an abandoned building on campus despite university officials reaching an agreement with pro-Palestinian encampment organizers the day before. A UC Berkeley official stated that the group “vandalizing an unsafe, boarded-up” structure was distinct from the coalition that decided to dismantle their encampment following a settlement with the university over its weapons investments.
With that agreement, the school joined at least four other California institutions and dozens throughout the country in reaching agreements with activists to halt campus encampments that some Jewish students claim have featured antisemitic signage and chants. Although no colleges have decided to withdraw from connections to Israel, which was one of the protesters’ main demands, each has indicated that it will look into ideas to tighten investment policy for corporations that supply weapons.
UC Irvine is not included. Student representatives met with university authorities two weeks ago to see if the school would agree to their divestment demands in exchange for an end to the encampment. However, conversations proved fruitless, according to student leaders, and their encampment persisted.
The group had requested an end to “violent extremism” funding, amnesty for student demonstrators, a commitment to an academic boycott of Israel, and the withdrawal of what the group refers to as “Zionist programming.”
Gillman released a statement on Wednesday, describing their requests as excessive and an “assault on our faculty’s academic freedom rights as well as the free speech rights of faculty and students.”
When protesters moved their campus demonstration to the physical sciences hall, UC Irvine officials responded quickly. Just after 3 p.m., the university issued a shelter-in-place order for everyone on campus near the protest, and UCI police called for assistance. Law enforcement organizations from all over the region responded, including the California Highway Patrol, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, and the Santa Ana, Fullerton, and Orange police departments, finally forming lines at the protest location and gradually pushing forward.
Some demonstrators fled as police approached, while others stayed to record.
Sarah Khalil stated that she was willing to stand by her position and risk arrest. “This cause is way bigger than any of us,” the fourth-year student remarked, fighting back tears.
“I’ve never seen a mobilization like this,” Laguna Beach resident Lorenzo Love told a Times reporter while attending a protest to support students speaking out against the Israel-Hamas war.
“These kids were peaceful,” Love explained.
Cops detained some demonstrators by 5:30 p.m. and began tearing down some of the tents and obstacles. Arrests proceeded as a number of officers pushed their way into the previously blocked lecture hall.
Protesters chained and roped the doors shut, according to a law enforcement source.
Meryem Kamil, an assistant professor of film and media studies, explained that she arrived late for the demonstration because she needed to complete teaching a class. When Kamil arrived, she promptly joined the throng of students gathered near the lecture hall, as she explained in a phone conversation.
As Kamil spoke, she mentioned that police in tactical gear were “kettling” the group she was with, corralling demonstrators into a smaller space.
Although her research focuses on Palestinians and she feels a connection to those suffering in the Gaza Strip, Kamil said her major motive for attending the protest was to safeguard the safety of students.
“Their bodies are on the line; my position is to make it as safe as possible,” she stated.
By 8:30 p.m., police officers had issued the second of two unlawful assembly orders. At this point, a few dozen protestors remained, the majority of whom were standing on the grass or slowly walking away. “Where is the unlawful assembly?” asked a student organizer.
The Orange County district attorney’s office announced Wednesday evening that those caught for failing to disperse will face charges. The office announced that charging decisions for those arrested will take at least a week, and they have released all detained individuals.
Prosecutor Todd Spitzer declared, “We encourage protesters to exercise their constitutional right to peaceful assembly, but we will not tolerate criminal activity that transcends peaceful assembly, including violence and vandalism of any kind.”
However, not all local authorities approved of how the evening turned out. Irvine’s mayor responded to X, stating that the kids’ conduct did not pose a threat.
“Taking space on campus or in a building is not a threat to anyone,” Mayor Farrah N. Khan wrote. “UCI leadership must do everything they can to avoid creating a violent scenario here.”
Will O’Neill, the mayor of Newport Beach, rebuked her statement, saying that multiple cops from his city were “currently in Irvine, providing assistance at the request of a mutual aid call.”
“Your careless wording makes it appear that you are preemptively accusing our officers, and officers from the many law enforcement agencies that responded, of violence,” he stated.
Don Wagner, chair of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, thanked the multiagency response on Wednesday, saying the officers demonstrated restraint by “giving protesters hours to peacefully remove themselves from the premises, regularly warning them through a loudspeaker system, gradually moving in and removing tents, canopies, trash, and barriers from the encampment, all without the violence we have seen recently on other campuses.”
“I am relieved to hear that the situation did not escalate,” Wagner said in a statement on Thursday.
After arrests began breaking up Wednesday’s demonstration at UCI, maintenance personnel began dismantling what remained of the weeks-long encampment, which was now merely a pile of junk consisting of wooden pallets, homemade signs, and different camping goods, and loading it into a moving truck.
Meanwhile, a small group of activists continued their standoff with police, waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Peaceful protest,” while cops stood guard and a police helicopter buzzed overhead.
“Community came out,” one kid stated, standing in the middle of Aldrich Park, a few hundred feet from the police line. “We did successfully take over the building, even if just for a brief time. We held our ground for several hours. That’s a huge victory.”
