Officials at Columbia and some other schools have been negotiating with student protesters who have rebuffed police and doubled down.
After a tent encampment popped up Thursday at Indiana University Bloomington, police with shields and batons shoved into protesters and arrested 33.
And at Ohio State University, police clashed with protesters just hours after they gathered Thursday evening.
At Columbia, protesters defiantly erected a tent encampment where many are set to graduate in front of families in just a few weeks.
“We have our demands; they have theirs,” said Ben Chang, a spokesperson for Columbia University, adding that if the talks fail the university will have to consider other options.
Just past midnight, a group of some three dozen pro-Palestinian protesters handed out signs and started chanting outside of the locked Columbia University gates.
Faculty members met with protesters Thursday to try to negotiate a solution as the campus remains shut down at least through the weekend.
The announcement was made a day after more than 90 protesters were arrested on campus.
The Columbia University students who served as the impetus for nationwide pro-Palestinian protests for the tenth day on Friday entrenched themselves at their encampment while college officials and law enforcement at campuses ranging from Connecticut to California grappled with how to handle protests that resulted in hundreds of arrests and altercations with the police.
Negotiations have taken place between officials at Columbia and a few other schools and student protestors who have resisted police and become more uncompromising. In order to quell protests before they have a chance to gain traction, other schools have swiftly resorted to law enforcement.
As the number of casualties in the Gaza War rises and the humanitarian situation deepens, demonstrators at US colleges are calling for an end to financial support for Israel and a divestment from businesses they claim are fueling the conflict. Calls for police intervention were partly sparked by Jewish students who claim the protests have turned antisemitic and have made them afraid to walk on campus.
Following the establishment of a tent camp on Thursday at Indiana University Bloomington, 33 people were arrested by police who used shields and batons to push protesters. A few hours later, police broke up tents and made one arrest at the University of Connecticut.
Police and demonstrators engaged in combat at Ohio State University a few hours after they had assembled on Thursday night. Citing policies prohibiting overnight events, university spokesperson Benjamin Johnson stated that individuals who disregarded warnings and remained were taken into custody and charged with criminal trespass.
Schools are under more pressure to end demonstrations as May commencement ceremonies draw near. Protesters bravely set up a tent encampment at Columbia, where many are scheduled to graduate in front of their families in a matter of weeks.
As talks approached the school’s early Friday deadline to come to a decision on dismantling the encampment, Columbia officials reported that the talks were going well. However, two police buses were parked close by, and police and private security were visibly present at the campus entrances.
Ben Chang, a representative for Columbia University, stated, “We have our demands; they have theirs,” and the university will have to look at other options if the negotiations fall through.
A little after midnight, about thirty pro-Palestinian demonstrators began chanting and passing out signs outside the locked Columbia University gates. After that, they marched off as a group of at least forty police officers gathered close by.
In response to the police’s attempt to free the students who have been imprisoned inside a campus building since Monday, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, has been in negotiations with them. The campus will remain closed at least through the weekend, so faculty members met with protestors on Thursday in an attempt to broker a compromise.
During the meeting, Jeff Crane, a dean at the school, proposed that the university establish a committee comprising students to conduct a thorough analysis of the school’s investments. Crane also recommended that in order to maintain open lines of communication, faculty and students continue to meet every 24 hours. A deal has not yet been declared by the parties.
With reference to the decision to call in the police to remove the students who were barricaded on Monday, the faculty and staff senate of the university demanded on Thursday that the president resign.
The University of Southern California, located on the opposite side of the state, postponed its graduation ceremony scheduled for May 10. A day after over ninety protestors were taken into custody on campus, the announcement was made. The university declared that it will continue to hold a large number of commencement activities, including all of the customary ceremonies for each individual school.
Already, tensions had escalated when USC postponed the pro-Palestinian valedictorian’s scheduled commencement speech, citing security concerns.
On Thursday, hundreds of students at the City College of New York, gathered on the lawn beneath the campus’s renowned gothic buildings in Harlem, cheered when a small group of police officers left the area. A “security training” session for students was taking place in one corner of the quad.
By early Thursday, 108 persons had been taken into custody at an encampment at Boston’s Emerson College. Police are seen on camera telling students to leave an alleyway at first. When police moved violently through the crowd and shoved some protesters to the ground, students joined arms to resist them.
It became increasingly tense as the evening wore on. All sides simply had more police officers. Ocean Muir, a sophomore, described it as feeling like we were being gradually pushed in and crushed.
According to Muir, she was taken away by police after being lifted by the arms and legs. Muir was accused on Thursday of trespassing and acting in an unruly manner along with other students.
Authorities from Emerson College had threatened to take action against the protesters if they didn’t leave, and they had warned students that the alley was a public right-of-way. Thursday’s classes at Emerson were canceled, and according to Boston police, the altercation resulted in non-life-threatening injuries to four officers.
Thursday was a lot more peaceful on the University of Texas at Austin campus than it had been the day before, when 57 people were arrested and charged with criminal trespass. Prominent university clock tower beneath the main square was opened to protestors when security guards withdrew.
A group of students and faculty members demonstrated against the war and the arrests made on Wednesday after hundreds of students were ejected from the school’s main lawn by state troopers riding horses and wearing riot gear.
State and local law enforcement moved quickly to break up a camp at Emory University in Atlanta. In addition to using a stun gun on a protester they had pinned to the ground, some officers were armed with semiautomatic rifles. In a statement released late on Thursday, the university said that items were thrown at police and that “chemical irritants” were used as a crowd-control tactic.
According to jail records, disorderly conduct was the reason for the arrest of 22 Emory police officers. Twenty members of the university community were among the 28 persons that Emory said it had been informed had been arrested; as of nightfall, some of them had been freed.
After the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict, the U. s. In response to allegations of antisemitism or Islamophobia, the Education Department has opened civil rights investigations into a number of colleges and universities. Many universities that are the target of protests, like Harvard and Columbia, are among those that are being looked into.
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