LOS ANGELES — Heightened and quick-moving police actions against protesters unfolded Monday at UCLA and other campuses, as university officials said there will be little tolerance for demonstrators who disrupt campus and violate laws and student conduct codes in the wake of last week’s violence and tensions at pro-Palestinian encampments.
At UCLA on Monday, campus police arrested 44 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in a parking structure — actions students called harassment and intimidation — as they assembled before a peaceful protest. Other protesters were ordered to disperse when they entered a campus building. On a day when campus was supposed to be fully open, instead classes were moved online for the rest of the week as a security precaution.
The action came after UCLA officials vowed to improve security after a violent mob attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment last week, which was later torn down by law enforcement. The UCLA police chief has come under intense criticism for the violence and failure to bring in police fast enough to quell the melee.
At UC San Diego, 64 people, including 40 students, were arrested and a growing pro-Palestinian encampment was declared illegal by the chancellor and was cleared out Monday morning. After antisemitic graffiti was found on Cal State L.A. buildings over the weekend, the university president increased campus security “to act swiftly and decisively if further unlawful activity occurs.”
At the University of Southern California — the site of a Sunday predawn police sweep and dismantling of a pro-Palestinian camp — security remained tight days before graduation. Only two entrances of the campus were open with long lines of students waiting to get through identification checkpoints. Days before graduation, tall fencing cordoned off Alumni Park in the center of campus where the encampment had been cleared.
USC President Carol Folt, in a letter to the USC community after police dismantled an encampment Sunday, said, “When free speech protests devolve into illegal occupations, violating the rights of others, we must draw a line.”
The heightened enforcement of campus rules at UC San Diego and UCLA represents a shift in tactics from a more light-handed approach that had allowed students to erect encampments under their free speech rights to support Palestinians and demand an end to Israeli actions in Gaza.
“As things begin to escalate, universities are shifting from a tolerant, ‘it’s OK, it’s free speech,’ to more ‘these things are going beyond free speech.’ It’s impeding the university’s delivery of service,” said one University of California source who was not authorized to speak publicly. “It causes each of the universities to respond to how they are going to mitigate or work around or resolve what is happening on campus.
Some students are pushing back against the stepped up security and expressed concerns about abuse of police power after the Monday arrests at UCLA.
“This is really apparent that the university is showing us their force, their power — whether it’s legal or not — to suppress what we’re trying to say,” said Marie Salem, a media liaison for the UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment.