The number of pro-Palestinian encampments at colleges nationwide continues to climb, reaching more than 80 campuses as of Wednesday. College leaders are grappling with how to balance students’ right to freedom of expression with campus safety concerns, and an uptick in arrests over the past several days has signaled that administrators are struggling to reach peaceful resolutions.
The encampments, inspired by students at Columbia University, where tents first appeared two weeks ago, most commonly demand that colleges divest financial holdings from companies with ties to Israel and its military.
The Chronicle examined 50 encampments that began from April 19-26 and tallied their outcomes. Nearly half resulted in arrests, while just five dispersed voluntarily. Around a dozen encampments remain active and have not been shut down by administrators or police officers, while others were rebuilt after being cleared.
Here’s what our analysis of student encampments found:
At least 23 resulted in arrests.
Columbia’s initial encampment resulted in the arrests of over 100 students and some faculty members. Now arrests have spread coast to coast, with hundreds of students arrested by campus police officers, city police officers, and state troopers.
At least 23 encampments have resulted in arrests, including New York University, Emory University, Emerson College, and the University of Florida. Some colleges have since asked local authorities to drop criminal charges against protesters. Most commonly, students have been charged with trespassing on their own campuses. Typically, police officers have ordered people in encampments to disperse and have arrested people who didn’t.
Last week, The Chronicle spoke to a student at Barnard College who was arrested and later notified that she could not return to her dorm or access campus spaces.
At the University of Florida, nine students were arrested, with one facing a battery charge for spitting on an officer, according to The Independent Florida Alligator, the university’s student newspaper.
5 led to campus disciplinary action.
At a handful of colleges, even though no arrests have taken place, administrators have charged students and faculty members with violations of campus conduct codes, leading to interim suspensions or bans from campus property.
Seven students at George Washington University were suspended Friday after administrators tallied “nine counts of misconduct” for each of them, according to the student newspaper, The GW Hatchet.
And at the University of Rochester, five people received interim bans from campus, including one student, according to the student newspaper, the Campus Times. Cornell University reportedly suspended four students, and four students at Purdue University reportedly face disciplinary charges.
A spokesperson for the University of California at Los Angeles, where counterprotesters violently accosted a pro-Palestinian encampment on Wednesday night, said the “student conduct process has been initiated” but didn’t elaborate on specific disciplinary charges.
6 were cleared and then rebuilt.
Much of the media attention has focused on New York City, where encampments at Columbia, New York University, and the New School returned after police crackdowns (an encampment at Columbia was again cleared by police on Tuesday night, resulting in dozens of arrests). A similar pattern unfolded at Indiana University at Bloomington, Virginia Tech, and the University of Southern California.
Indiana’s encampment was shut down twice by university police officers and state troopers, only to pop back up again in the same location soon after. Law enforcement made more than 50 arrests over two days; the encampment remained active as of Wednesday.
One day before the first encampment began, Indiana University officials changed university policy to require organizers to get approval before pitching tents on campus. Pamela Whitten, the president, said in a statement on Sunday that the policy change was in response to the national pro-Palestinian encampment movement.
Over 500 faculty members, graduate students, and staff rallied on Monday to demand that Whitten and Provost Rahul Shrivastav resign. Faculty members voted no confidence in Whitten, Shrivastav, and the vice provost for faculty and academic affairs, Carrie Docherty, in March after the cancellation of a Palestinian artist’s exhibit and other controversies.
13 have faced no official consequences as of Wednesday.
Some colleges have let encampments remain, with warnings that protesters could face discipline if any campus policies were violated. Several other institutions have threatened consequences for demonstrators but have yet to take action.
At Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania, students started an encampment more than a week ago. Administrators have not called for it to disband, and instead will meet with organizers “to try to bring the protest to a peaceful conclusion,” according to the student newspaper, The Phoenix. In the fall, a pro-Palestinian sit-in went on for three weeks and resulted in only disciplinary warnings.
An encampment at the University of California at Berkeley has also had no reported altercations, and the university has not involved law enforcement.
Tensions rose Wednesday at Tufts University, in Massachusetts, when protesters did not disperse by a Tuesday evening deadline. Administrators warned that students who remained at the encampment would be considered trespassers and subject to arrest. But as of Wednesday evening, the administration hadn’t disciplined protesters or gotten the police involved. Similar threats of disciplinary action have reportedly occurred at Harvard University.
In several cases, local police departments have not intervened on behalf of colleges to disband encampments. Officers in Washington, D.C., reportedly rejected a request from George Washington administrators to disband an encampment, citing the optics of a clash with protesters less than a mile from the White House.
Ann Cudd, the president of Portland State University, asked Portland police to remove students occupying a college library on Tuesday, but police have bided their time, citing the need to let time pass to allow the situation to de-escalate. The mayor of Bloomington also instructed the city police’s department not to participate in clearing the encampment at Indiana University; it was cleared by university police officers and state police.
5 dispersed voluntarily.
Three encampments at Evergreen State College, Northwestern University, and Brown University secured promises from administrators in return for an effective end to their encampments. Two others — at Michigan State University and the University of Pittsburgh — ended without incident.
The deal signed on Tuesday by Evergreen administrators and students was notable for its scope, language, and positive reception from protesters. The memorandum of understanding will create a task force to revise the college’s investment policies and “address divestment” from companies that profit from “the occupation of Palestinian territories.” The document will also create other task forces to examine campus policing, grants, and study-abroad policies.
The document also calls on the college’s president to release a statement that pledges, among other things, “respect for the March 25 United Nations resolution” that calls for “a lasting, sustainable ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas. The agreement came eight days after the encampment at the college began.
The deals at Northwestern and Brown have received some pushback from protesters.
Note: A small number of colleges were counted in more than one category — for instance, Indiana University at Bloomington was included in the arrests category and the encampment-rebuilt category.
