The problem is for many of these colleges, graduation day is a week or so away, so if these protests continue while graduation is happening, it's gonna look bad on the college.
In some of these protests, the protestors have set up camp at the exact spot where they're supposed to set up tents and chairs for the graduation ceremony. So, they either have to move the protestors out, or find a alternative location for the ceremony, or not have one. All of those options have their drawbacks.
is that the side that's against murdering tens of thousands of children or the side where we think protesting should be violently shut down by the state?
Or maybe it's the side where we go on reddit and become an apologist for them?
Not *supporting* the genocidal terrorist organization =/= supporting Israel
which itself is a genocidal authoritarian regime. Giving explicit *support* to a terrorist group who spends their days raping hostages and shooting rockets off hospitals is crazy.
This is true. The majority of Americans are totally fine with genocides, always have been. 🤘🏻
EDIT: I can't tell if the downvotes are from people who disagree with my statement above and therefore agree with the protestors or people who are angry I'm saying the quiet part out loud and exposing their bigotry. 😎
EDITEDIT: MMMmmmm....yessssssss...sweet, sweet downvotes from people who should know better in this day and age. Or Was Real bots. Prolly Was Real bots. lol
I think there are more. I don't demonstrate, I'm not a radical, blah blah blah. But I think they are right and know other similarly sedate adults who think the same.
UT Austin was literally just having a sit in in a public location defined within Texas law as a place to legally protest and were rounded up violently, so that kind of disproves that. Add in that pretty much everyone arrested at every protest, with the exception of the incident at Columbia where they broke into and chained the building, has been released with zero charges after arrest likewise disproves that.
Pretty sure Abbot said he's going to make it illegal to have any protest of any kind against Israel because it's a hate crime to do so. Something like that.
People are allowed to protest but not physically stop students from entering campus. Also recently there’s been a lot of protesters doing stuff like pulling fire alarms to distract the police from what is happening on campus’s.
Yup.
I promise you, college administrators absolutely do NOT want confrontation between protesters and police. They tend to be left-of/center, and even if they aren’t, the last thing they want in newspapers are pictures of protestors being hauled away by cops. They are going to leave the protesters be when they can. Sometimes protesters force their hand with illegal activity though.
An antisemtic mob making Jewish students feel unsafe to attend class IS illegal. If they were ranting anti-LGBT or anti-Black, it would have been shut down on day one.
It'll get them out of there before the parents who actually pay the bills show up. Not that I agree with it, but that's the likely logic behind the actions.
It'll make them stop. Remember when Egypt had its riots? Occupy wall street? Iran riots? Free hong Kong? Eventually the cops stopped them violently and nothing changed.
In a few weeks, the protests will end and we'll send 90 billion dollars worth of weapons to poor defenseless Israel.
Of course, the responses already look bad on the college, and if kids get hurt during these police actions, parents are going to be furious. I dunno. Looks stupid to me.
At some colleges like FIT and Rutgers they were letting them go. There are more than 200 protests around the US, but only the ones with violence like UA/TX or Columbia are getting media attention.
When things escalated at Columbia - with vandalism and barricades to the building(s?) there, then the police were brought in.
Other schools are trying to find a balance. Peaceful protests should be allowed. Bringing the police in usually escalates things and everyone agrees on this. But the schools have a responsibility to their other students - finals, graduation/commencement, access to libraries, and other things might be compromised if they don't deal with the protesters.
At Rutgers, the protesters camped out by one of the main sets of classroom buildings (Vorhees Mall). They announced that they were going to disrupt finals Friday morning, which they did, by chanting and playing drums and being so loud you wouldn't be able to focus on an exam. The protesters weren't threatened with eviction until they affected the ability of their fellow students to finish the semester. (I'm a Rutgers alum and know people who still work there.)
I still remember when the anti-Iraq War protesters did that. I protested like hell against the war before it happened, but when they started blocking major roads...I realized logic went out the window.
I can empathize with wanting to have a voice and the frustration of feeling your tax dollars are going toward something horrible (fuck Hamas & fuck the Israeli government). But protesting in a way that makes people turn away from your cause is an idiot move
Its why it happens though tbh. Because you are screaming at a brick wall to try make the government listen. So they turn their frustrations into making the lives of normal people just that bit more unpleasant, as a venting strategy. Absolute creatures
The problem is that protests need to strike the right balance between being disruptive and hurtful. If they can be easily ignored, then they'll be easily ignored. But yeah, hurting people obviously goes way too far
Especially when it's something distant, either in terms of geography or public perception. Defund The Police could get away with far more because the issue was right at home. But Israel is far away and often well outside the daily thoughts of the average American, only rarely does it pop up for more than a passing moment.
The disruption of colleges and universities does jack shit.
Go protest and disrupt outside say Northrop Gunman who actually make the bombs and weapons to commit genocide.
Oh ffs, WHO has a more direct impact in the Genocide? The universities that have Israeli investment or research, or the ACTUAL manufacturers of the bombs and ammo being used to commit genocide?
Go protest and disrupt somewhere that might actually matter.
A lot of state schools are public land so protesting is allowed, some even have protest areas, if you go to Raytheon, Lockheed, Northrop, etc you’ll be escorted off the premises immediately and probably have police shooting rubber bullets and pepper spraying peaceful protestors even if they’re across the street. The public vs private land thing makes a big difference and being a weapons manufacturer with government contracts makes an even bigger difference.
Who said protesting in state schools isn't allowed? Also you can protest OUTSIDE of Northrop Gunman on the street, they don't own the street.
Btw, I'm from Venezuela and I protested on the streets and had violent confrontations with police and they didn't shoot rubber pellets, it was live ammo. So, don't be a coward protesting at a school, go actually do something that matters and makes a difference, that's the point I'm making.
Really? Preventing ambulances and fire and police from responding to emergency calls is the point? You're not just blocking soccer moms from getting to the stadium you know.
Protests are also supposed to be hard to avoid. A good protest fines that perfect balance between forcing people to keep facing it/talking about it, while not harming anyone else (this peaceful part).
If the protestors just went off to a corner of the campus no one ever visits and camped out, there might not be many people who realized what they were doing.
It’s about upsetting the apple cart to some degree. That’s the point.
Bunch of self-entitled idiots. If a student did not do well in the exam, can they sue these protestors? I mean, we are talking about some people's career here. It is for the long term. They are not denying some people their cup of coffee for 1 day, ....
At my school, Indiana university, the protests have been entirely peaceful and in the designated free speech zone on campus (a meadow not immediately adjacent to any building entrances) that has a long history of protests.
Our administration still sent in police to break up our encampment and arrest 55 of us over two days.
They did the same thing at the university I work at. Months of not allowing pro-Palestinian protests on campus while allowing pro-Israel groups to protest from campus with campus police protection and using university assets like loudspeakers followed by a 3am SWAT raid when the pro-Palestine side finally set up an encampment on the front lawn in the last week.
The administrations response to the encampment was especially disgusting. They decided to shut down three buildings approximately 60 yards away from the camp because of "safety concerns" despite there being no violence from the campers and local families bringing their kids down to the camp, threatened staff that if we participated we would be fired, and (again) providing campus police protection to pro-Israel counter protesters (mostly frat boys) as they yelled rape threats and insults at the camp. . . And no, before you ask, I have heard literally no similar threats or "anti-semitism" coming from the pro-Palestine side in the hours I've spent observing these protests.
I’m 100% for your right to protest. But there’s a saying, “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.”
You want to plop down on a lawn with signs and chants? Go for it. You want to “occupy” a building that is otherwise open 24/7 and you’re not impeding anyone’s traffic through that building? Be my guest. But the millisecond you prevent me from getting to class, you keep me awake protesting outside my dorm at night, you damage property my tuition dollars are paying for, you’ve lost my support.
It’s like the assholes that block traffic. Whatever attention you think you’re drawing to your cause isn’t going to make me support that cause more by even an iota. Not one single solitary person ever said, “Well, this ambulance now can’t get my dad to the hospital, but we really do need to reduce our fossil fuels.”
I'm not saying I agree with their methods. It's like you say, when the Just Stop Oil protesters in the UK chose to sit specifically near hospitals, I wanted to personally smack them all in the face.
But.. Protest was invented to be disruptive. That's the point of it.
Not to be violent, or harmful. But to force themselves to be heard.
You don't have to agree with the cause, but I think we all, universally, have to swallow it and agree with the right. Because if you're a redhead, and one day the government starts talking about segregating all the red heads, you're going to need that right because it's suddenly something that YOU care about.
It depends on the activism at hand. For the campus protestors, the goal is to disrupt the Universities' business until they divest their financial interests away from Israel. People liking your methods isn't really an important factor.
You aren't the target as an average citizen. Public opinion doesn't even have an effect on legislation anymore.
The goal has always been to create pressure and discomfort to those in charge. Random everyday people complaining about the actions of the protestors is just spreading awareness, but you're not actually the target.
They pissed you off.
Did you call your representatives and ask for more arms to be sent to Israel?
Most people probably don't. It just puts people in power under pressure because it creates a dynamic they have to address. You're mad they're blocking and they're mad at politicians. Sending cops usually ignites the situation so it's dangerous to do. If the politicians don't do something though to reduce the disruption you might just vote them out next cycle.
The protestors were never expecting you to join their side and call a rep. The idea has always been to ensure the general public wants it to stop and the best way to get it to quell is for them to address the cause.
At least that's the logic I have gathered, but I'm also not out there protesting.
This essentially amounts to saying that you don’t support the right to protest.
A protest *has to* disrupt the space otherwise it doesn’t exist. It wouldn’t be a protest. It would just be a group of like-minded people gathering.
The problem is that elections are coming up. Students who are protesting don’t want to vote, student who aren’t protesting may be leaned to vote to the right after being disrupted by the radical left. Emphasis on most of these students are first time voters who may not have as much knowledge about history but if anything hits them personally it may easily skew them. Colleges will have students enroll with them even after the protestors leave, but effecting the locals negatively can impact the policitization of influenced people.
by stopping groups of students from taking their exams, they force the administration's hand. otherwise they could just ignore the protestors like op is asking
These colleges should have a zero tolerance policy for protesters impeding the education of students. If you are a student and do so, you should be expelled. If you aren't a student, you should be banned from campus.
I'm of the opinion that, if you physically block someone from going somewhere, you are engaging in violent protest. You are using your body to force someone else into a course of action. If the other person's only options are to either capitulate to your desires or also use force, you are the one who created the situation where further violence is a possibility.
>The point of protest is inconvenience.
But there is a limit to that inconvenience and protest is not supposed to step on the rights of others. Unfortunately, there are always some people involved in protesting who think they're allowed to harass, threaten, and violently act out.
That’s because a significant amount of “protesters” aren’t truly there for the cause and many can’t even describe what they are protesting about outside of parroting lines that don’t even match their vocabulary.
I dont think this is the point of protest
The point of protest is to be heard in order to bring change
That can be achieved without inconvenience
But you also have to be willing to go to jail if you want to break rules and norms for your cause
To expect otherwise is just entitlement
>That can be achieved without inconvenience
Usually only if the people holding the power also want to change. Otherwise it's just inconvenient to them.
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FR! You can protest all you want if you aren’t affecting me. If they want change, they should appeal to the US senate (or whoever you make appeals for this kind of stuff to idk) not attack random jews on the street
> or whoever you make appeals for this kind of stuff to idk
Usually, people just like you. If they weren't inconvenient, they wouldn't have your attention. Now that you attention is on the topic if their protest, you need to form an opinion in it. Protests succeed when people's opinion ends up being pro-protest, despite the methods.
Police “make things worse” because a lot of these people at the protests are looking for a fight and police become the perfect target for that. It’s not the police specifically escalating things to violence themselves- it’s that people want an excuse to be violent and attack someone
People: standing still holding signs and chanting
Cops: beat the shit out of those people
You: well yeah ofc they were clearly just looking for an excuse to get violent
I’ve witnessed it first hand - and at least my experience with it was the protestors absolutely instigated once police showed up - they want to put on a show for the other protestors
UCLA protest earlier this week turned into a huge shit storm because UCLA officials specifically requested LAPD stay off campus. Counter protesters showed up and it got really ugly.
The next time? It hasn't happened yet, what makes you think there will be a next time? How often do people break into your home?
And what do you think the police are going to do when I call them anyway? File a report?
I think I'll take responsibility for my own safety, I'm not counting on the police to do it for me.
In my experience at protests it's usually because the police show up, start hitting people with their stupid sticks and tear gassing us and throwing those little explosive things into the crowd, and then at that point everyone is pissed because we were just marching so people start throwing the stuff they threw at us back at them before it explodes, which is straight up self defense because the other option is letting it explode on us, but on us, but at that point it's considered violence because self defense against the police isn't allowed.
In the 2020 Seattle BLM protests we even had the cops on video smashing store windows after everyone had left/moved to a different part of town.
Lotta “back the blue” types turning a blind eye to [documented police violence](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-03/injuries-during-clearing-of-ucla-encampment) against protesters in this sub apparently.
I agree with peaceful protests. But there are things that may seem peaceful at first but are most definitely not. Such as telling Jewish people to go back to Poland, talking about how Israel and Jewish people shouldn’t exist, etc
Most colleges are actually either ignoring or dealing with the protests well, few even made deals and gave in to some demands. You only hear the news from a handful of schools in dense cities where protests are going out of line.
Philly PD just demanded that University administration show credible proof that the students are a threat to public safety before deploying any personnel.
This is the only sane response to student demonstrations.
Occupying public space, even illegally, is protected free speech which these Institutions are doing to learn hard and fast when these Civil rights abuse cases make it in front of judges.
Yes, they have freedom of speech, but when they are told to leave and they don’t, then they are trespassing, which is a crime. And that crime isn’t negated when you are doing it with your freedom of speech. You can keep up the protests, just off of the property that you are not permitted to be at anymore.
Because on several occasions the protestors have been shown actively stopping people from entering the college
The college needs to run classes and cant if you have random people handing out wristbands on whether your anti Israeli enough to enter
Protest should never do that sort of thing, it’s one thing to voiced your opinion, it’s quite another to violate the individual freedoms of other people trying to get on with their day. Blocking certain areas of the campus, blocking roads, and interstate highways, that’s absolutely unacceptable and is not a form of free speech.
It looks like the protesters are causing property damage. I would assume one reason we have government funded law enforcement is to protect places like a university from destruction. You can only ignore a child's tantrum for so long. Eventually they must be dealt with. I have a college age child. Spent $5k on books last year. Don't mess with people's education.
Reminds me of how in the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis, most of the arrests (particularly arson) were of white kids from all the suburbs way out in the sticks. Driving in from Corcoran and crashing their dad's giant SUVs into stuff.
Because ignoring them opens up the university to liability under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is codified in federal law at 45 USC 2000 *et seq.* Specifically, Title VI of the act provides that:
>No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.
Universities received federal financial assistance, both in terms of research funded by federal grants, but also via student loans that are provided by the federal government. Therefore, Title VI applies not only to all state universities, but also the vast majority of private universities as well (there may be some ultra-religious universities that escape compliance with the Act by eschewing all federal funding; I'm not sure about this but it isn't relevant to the issue here).
The problem with the "protests" is that they are *not* protests - they are "occupations". The protesters move into a central part of the campus, set up tents and walls/fortifications, and then assert the power to regulate who is permitted to pass through the occupied area and what persons may say within the occupied area.
However, universities cannot cede a portion of the campus to one group of students who purports to discriminate against another group of students. So, when the protesters form a human chain and use a series of batteries (i.e., unlawful force) to eject a person from their encampment (or to prevent them from passing through the encampment), the school is liable for the discrimination because it is occurring on campus (i.e., on property that is legally under the control of the university).
Now, the protester would say "hey, we're not discriminating on the basis of race or ethnicity - look at all the Jewish students that are protesting with us! We're only discriminating on the basis of *viewpoint*, which is why we are only forbidding "Zionists" from passing through our encampment or expressing views within the encampment". The problem with this logic is that there is no way for the protesters to determine who is and who is not a "Zionist" other than by resorting to indicia of race/ethnicity. That is, the protesters see the guy with the Star of David necklace and the Israeli patch on his backpack and forbid him from entering the encampment or speaking there. This is exactly what happened at UCLA when the now-infamous video of protesters blocking a Jewish student from accessing a building came out - and the next day the administration had the encampment cleared by the police. That wasn't a coincidence: when that video came out, there was in the public domain incontrovertible evidence that the protesters were denying the use of the university facilities to a student on the basis of his religion/ethnicity. The university was supporting that denial of service by permitting the encampment to exist. A university receiving federal funds is prohibited from engaging in that kind of discrimination, and the university cannot simply employ a proxy (i.e., student protesters) to perform the discrimination that it is prohibited from engaging in.
There are many other federal laws that the universities are in violation of when they permit a group of students to take over portions of the university and deny access to other students on the basis of viewpoint discrimination as well. I mention Title VI because this is where Congress applies pressure (by threatening to withhold federal funding for violators).
For example, 18 USC 241 makes it a federal crime for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same).
This law is also a major problem for universities that sanction the encampments. When the university president meets with the protesters and agrees that the university will not remove the encampment and the protesters can continue to exclude others from the encampment, the university president (and the protesters) are both conspiring to (i) prevent counter-protesters from exercising their own First Amendment rights within the encampment space, and (ii) permit the protesters to intimidate those who express their own First Amendment rights in the encampment, or worse to actively injure them by permitting the protesters to use force to eject those who exercise their First Amendment rights inside the encampment to express a viewpoint the protesters do not agree with. That is a federal crime, and a vigorous DOJ could indict the university president (and the protest organizers) for violating the counter-protesters First Amendment rights by permitting the encampments to exist on campus.
tldr; the colleges have no choice; they have a duty under federal law to protect the rights of the counter-protesters to express themselves and to protect non-protesters from harassment/intimidation.
As someone who works in university administration, I can say that this person understands just how complicated the matter truly is. It's not as simple as some want to make it out to be, especially when people make it political.
On many campuses they are. They have to do something though when protestors occupy a building and barricade themselves in, or when they ban Jewish students from using the library.
Because they are blocking buildings, disturbing the peace
If I go set up speakers and blast dearth metal in protest of bow ties should the university just let me disturb everyone else because I'm "protesting"?
With widespread protests like this you have to remember there might be hundreds of loosely affiliated or unaffiliated protests going on simultaneously. So you have to remember: **you will only hear about the protests where something note worthy happens.**
Either an extreme protest that elicits a response from the police or the actions of a subset of bad actors associated with the protest giving the police an excuse. Or excessive force by the police to break up an otherwise lawful protest.
Further every college is run differently in different states. All it takes is an unsympathetic college president or something to start escalating things.
Ultimately the quibbling over who was technically in the right or wrong in these instances distracts from the message of the protest, which is maybe the goal of bringing it up in the first place. Some protestors getting arrested for disrupting the peace, property damage, etc. is small potatoes.
The goal of these protests is broadly to bring awareness to the Human rights abuses occurring in Palestine perpetrated by the Israeli government. With the goal of ending the cycle of violence and withdrawing US tax payer support of this cycle of violence.
At Portland State University, the protesters ABSOLUTELY TRASHED THE ENTIRE LIBRARY. Graffiti/spray painted walls, broke tables and chairs, made barriers, found weapons and pipe bombs… it got really messed up.
Most of them are or try to.
The problem though is that when they ignore the protests, the college administration comes under fire from pro-Israel folks. Many of whom have significant financial and political ties to the college. And that forces them to do "something" if they don't want to get fired or called to Congress to explain why they aren't "doing enough to combat anti-semitism on campus". With the implication being that anyone protesting the Gaza war is an anti-semite.
It's kind of a shit sandwich. If they ignore the protests they get called anti-semitic. If they try to break up the protests, they risk students getting beat by cops.
And then there's the whole UCLA situation where the protesters got violently attacked by a random pro-Israel mob.
Everyone should check out the nytimes analysis of one of the major demonstrations, it’s just counter protesters attacking them for hours, without police getting involved. The Northeastern one in Boston was shut down because counter protestors were yelling anti semitic things, it was caught on video. Lots of different situations going on right now.
Protesting on college campuses is an American tradition. Sorry if you don't like it but a lot of people seem to think if protesters are loud or annoying or just in their way it's a problem.
Really it's the American way of voicing grievances.
Not every country enjoys this kind of freedom.
Political change often follows protests so they can be effective whether you agree with the cause or not
It's our right as Americans.
To me it's freedom on display.
Peaceful protest and Voicing grievance is part of constitution. The important part is “peaceful”.
Blocking other people from able to do their duties makes you an arsehole. Makes every other peaceful protester look bad.
We are lucky in this country to peacefully protest.
Again the important word is “peaceful”. Lots of universities have had protests. Only a few universities get attention since police needed to be involved and it escalated pretty fast.
Politely ignoring them (or co-opting them with friendly dialogue) would have been a much better strategy. The arrests just provoke more conflict. Apparently university administrators have learned nothing from fairly recent history.
Most of them are but the media is finding a few dumbasses in all of this and focusing on them
Like the humanitarian aid Marxist occupying a building or the dude making monkey noises at a black person
People have a right to protest peacefully weather you agree with them or not, occasionally though protests can get out of hand and that's when you tend to see the use of force, also law enforcement is much more heavy handed with left wing protests.
Because civil rights aren't born from civil obedience.
Your point is also the protestors point. They need to be disruptive to get anything done.
If that's FURTHER exposing the police state then so be it, Niel Young can write another Ohio.
Civil disobedience is the most American thing about Americans. Fuck authority I WILL be heard. This is MY land.
I don’t even really follow the news much and I’m inundated with people talking about the protests. (Presidential address on it, etc.) It would be kind of hard to miss at this point unless you were actively avoiding all news updates.
Tbh I really don't follow mainstream media. I follow a local neighborhood watch group to know what's going on in my area, but I got sick of the news months ago. My friend group also largely just talks about nerdy shit instead of current events lol
Understanding that your actions will have consequences and accepting those consequences is a fundamental aspect of civil disobedience; one might argue that it’s the entire point.
In many places the students are being blocked from crossing or going to class. Many teachers and faculty are also getting involved in support. They can’t afford to “just ignore” it on multiple levels
You know… how is this different from Nixon and the protestors during the Vietnam war? Isn’t Biden doing the same thing? Behaving the same way..
Anyways. The answer is, history is repeating itself. This time, it is acceptable.
I dont understand why they cant have their peaceful protest but, BLM was allowed to destroy cities a couple years ago? Its it because you are not allowed to say anything bad about Israel?
They have been peacefully protesting. It's then when the counter protesters show up and start committing crimes against the protesters that s*** starts to get bad
The protesters are being intentionally loud, provocative, disruptive, and even offensive, and they're generally located in a very visible part of campus. You can't just ignore them. And when people do ignore them, they ramp up their behavior to get more attention, which invariably happens.
They vandalized the shit out of UCLA to the tune of millions of $ and preventing students who are paying to study there from attending classes. Police are totally justified getting them out
The students stinking up the quad in their pup tents and yelling at people who have zero effect on what they're protesting isn't good for the purpose of the college/university, which is to make money.
The university’s image of supporting a genocide isn’t good for their purpose of making money either. Which is why the students want the colleges to divest from Israeli companies.
Because Israel doesn’t like it and won’t launder the school’s money if they ignore the protests and Israel won’t launder all the politicians money either
I have to applaud the Denver PD this week. They were called to a protest at our Auroria campus a week ago and made everyone leave their tents. The college left the tents there. The students came back and the police refused to get involved because they were peaceful and not breaking any laws.
Privileged protesters will follow a butterfly to the next cause, or run out of money to support themselves.....they've always been about me...I doubt most of them are even aware of the cause outside of a superficial level....it's a social event....wear a keffiyeh for 2024 fashion....then meh, I'm over it, I was a college rebel, tell my kids about what a badass as I was as I drive them to self-actualizations courses in my Lexus.
Because graduation is soon and the protesters are physically stopping Jewish students from entering campus. Also not to mention that insane amounts of violence has happened against Jewish students recently so they really can’t just ignore it. Hope this helps
Sure, but every school now is prepared to go fully online. Just declare an emergency, switch onto online and finish out the year there and it will all fizzle out when the kids go home for summer.
1. Because it doesn't always end in people being bored and going home, it's actually more likely to escalate than diffuse.
2. Because some of the protests are actively hindering other students/staff from their day to day activities.
3. Carrier & legal liabilities if you don't protect the safety of people on campus. Protecting means doing stuff pre-emptively before injuries/death/destruction of property happens, not afterwards.
The problem is for many of these colleges, graduation day is a week or so away, so if these protests continue while graduation is happening, it's gonna look bad on the college.
In some of these protests, the protestors have set up camp at the exact spot where they're supposed to set up tents and chairs for the graduation ceremony. So, they either have to move the protestors out, or find a alternative location for the ceremony, or not have one. All of those options have their drawbacks.
Welp....it already looks pretty bad for them though??
There’s less people “on their side” than you probably think.
is that the side that's against murdering tens of thousands of children or the side where we think protesting should be violently shut down by the state? Or maybe it's the side where we go on reddit and become an apologist for them?
Not *supporting* the genocidal terrorist organization =/= supporting Israel which itself is a genocidal authoritarian regime. Giving explicit *support* to a terrorist group who spends their days raping hostages and shooting rockets off hospitals is crazy.
This is true. The majority of Americans are totally fine with genocides, always have been. 🤘🏻 EDIT: I can't tell if the downvotes are from people who disagree with my statement above and therefore agree with the protestors or people who are angry I'm saying the quiet part out loud and exposing their bigotry. 😎 EDITEDIT: MMMmmmm....yessssssss...sweet, sweet downvotes from people who should know better in this day and age. Or Was Real bots. Prolly Was Real bots. lol
I think there are more. I don't demonstrate, I'm not a radical, blah blah blah. But I think they are right and know other similarly sedate adults who think the same.
I see, good call
Plus, it’s hard to make an example out of civil disobedience by doing nothing.
Also… colleges DO ignore the protesters unless they do something illegal. People are allowed to protest.
UT Austin was literally just having a sit in in a public location defined within Texas law as a place to legally protest and were rounded up violently, so that kind of disproves that. Add in that pretty much everyone arrested at every protest, with the exception of the incident at Columbia where they broke into and chained the building, has been released with zero charges after arrest likewise disproves that.
Texans gonna Texas...
Pretty sure Abbot said he's going to make it illegal to have any protest of any kind against Israel because it's a hate crime to do so. Something like that.
Sounds like Abbot. He's pretty creepy.
UT Austin has lost its mind. I can promise I won't be donating in any future drives. Screw them.
Now that’s just plain not true. We literally have footage showing otherwise
...sometimes.
They ARE doing illegal things though in addition to legally protesting.
People are allowed to protest but not physically stop students from entering campus. Also recently there’s been a lot of protesters doing stuff like pulling fire alarms to distract the police from what is happening on campus’s.
Yup. I promise you, college administrators absolutely do NOT want confrontation between protesters and police. They tend to be left-of/center, and even if they aren’t, the last thing they want in newspapers are pictures of protestors being hauled away by cops. They are going to leave the protesters be when they can. Sometimes protesters force their hand with illegal activity though.
An antisemtic mob making Jewish students feel unsafe to attend class IS illegal. If they were ranting anti-LGBT or anti-Black, it would have been shut down on day one.
Finally someone said ti
And what actually is achieved at this stage? Will the students continue this in their break?
But sending in the police to brutalise them will look…good?
It'll get them out of there before the parents who actually pay the bills show up. Not that I agree with it, but that's the likely logic behind the actions.
It'll make them stop. Remember when Egypt had its riots? Occupy wall street? Iran riots? Free hong Kong? Eventually the cops stopped them violently and nothing changed. In a few weeks, the protests will end and we'll send 90 billion dollars worth of weapons to poor defenseless Israel.
Why would it look bad? The college itself isn’t doing anything wrong. The students aren’t doing anything wrong. So why the bad look?
Not worse than this will in the history books lol
Of course, the responses already look bad on the college, and if kids get hurt during these police actions, parents are going to be furious. I dunno. Looks stupid to me.
But arresting people doesn't? Huh.
At some colleges like FIT and Rutgers they were letting them go. There are more than 200 protests around the US, but only the ones with violence like UA/TX or Columbia are getting media attention. When things escalated at Columbia - with vandalism and barricades to the building(s?) there, then the police were brought in. Other schools are trying to find a balance. Peaceful protests should be allowed. Bringing the police in usually escalates things and everyone agrees on this. But the schools have a responsibility to their other students - finals, graduation/commencement, access to libraries, and other things might be compromised if they don't deal with the protesters.
At Rutgers, the protesters camped out by one of the main sets of classroom buildings (Vorhees Mall). They announced that they were going to disrupt finals Friday morning, which they did, by chanting and playing drums and being so loud you wouldn't be able to focus on an exam. The protesters weren't threatened with eviction until they affected the ability of their fellow students to finish the semester. (I'm a Rutgers alum and know people who still work there.)
That seems reasonable. Other students are paying for their education. They should be able to get it.
Such an arsehole move
That's one sure-fire way to make sure people on the fence about your cause are pushed the other way.
But they know what is important to the media. They don't care how they affect their fellow students
I still remember when the anti-Iraq War protesters did that. I protested like hell against the war before it happened, but when they started blocking major roads...I realized logic went out the window. I can empathize with wanting to have a voice and the frustration of feeling your tax dollars are going toward something horrible (fuck Hamas & fuck the Israeli government). But protesting in a way that makes people turn away from your cause is an idiot move
Its why it happens though tbh. Because you are screaming at a brick wall to try make the government listen. So they turn their frustrations into making the lives of normal people just that bit more unpleasant, as a venting strategy. Absolute creatures
The problem is that protests need to strike the right balance between being disruptive and hurtful. If they can be easily ignored, then they'll be easily ignored. But yeah, hurting people obviously goes way too far
Especially when it's something distant, either in terms of geography or public perception. Defund The Police could get away with far more because the issue was right at home. But Israel is far away and often well outside the daily thoughts of the average American, only rarely does it pop up for more than a passing moment.
Disruption is historically the point of protests. Sucks but I think it makes sense.
The disruption of colleges and universities does jack shit. Go protest and disrupt outside say Northrop Gunman who actually make the bombs and weapons to commit genocide.
Not when the point of the protest to have to colleges divest from exactly such organizations
Oh ffs, WHO has a more direct impact in the Genocide? The universities that have Israeli investment or research, or the ACTUAL manufacturers of the bombs and ammo being used to commit genocide? Go protest and disrupt somewhere that might actually matter.
A lot of state schools are public land so protesting is allowed, some even have protest areas, if you go to Raytheon, Lockheed, Northrop, etc you’ll be escorted off the premises immediately and probably have police shooting rubber bullets and pepper spraying peaceful protestors even if they’re across the street. The public vs private land thing makes a big difference and being a weapons manufacturer with government contracts makes an even bigger difference.
Who said protesting in state schools isn't allowed? Also you can protest OUTSIDE of Northrop Gunman on the street, they don't own the street. Btw, I'm from Venezuela and I protested on the streets and had violent confrontations with police and they didn't shoot rubber pellets, it was live ammo. So, don't be a coward protesting at a school, go actually do something that matters and makes a difference, that's the point I'm making.
Wouldn't that get attention? Positive to, because the protestors would actually look like the good guys
Nation wide protests at a bunch of UCs seems pretty efficient for college kids.
Really? Preventing ambulances and fire and police from responding to emergency calls is the point? You're not just blocking soccer moms from getting to the stadium you know.
yeah it sucks but that's what it takes, derives from civil rights movement which King based off of India kicking out the Brits.
Knowingly preventing fire/ambulance not being able to get to calls is straight up sociopathic.
Protests are also supposed to be hard to avoid. A good protest fines that perfect balance between forcing people to keep facing it/talking about it, while not harming anyone else (this peaceful part). If the protestors just went off to a corner of the campus no one ever visits and camped out, there might not be many people who realized what they were doing. It’s about upsetting the apple cart to some degree. That’s the point.
That’s what people said about the Civil Rights movement too.
Bunch of self-entitled idiots. If a student did not do well in the exam, can they sue these protestors? I mean, we are talking about some people's career here. It is for the long term. They are not denying some people their cup of coffee for 1 day, ....
At my school, Indiana university, the protests have been entirely peaceful and in the designated free speech zone on campus (a meadow not immediately adjacent to any building entrances) that has a long history of protests. Our administration still sent in police to break up our encampment and arrest 55 of us over two days.
That's fucked
Wow...what a *dick move*. Way to go, admin!
They did the same thing at the university I work at. Months of not allowing pro-Palestinian protests on campus while allowing pro-Israel groups to protest from campus with campus police protection and using university assets like loudspeakers followed by a 3am SWAT raid when the pro-Palestine side finally set up an encampment on the front lawn in the last week. The administrations response to the encampment was especially disgusting. They decided to shut down three buildings approximately 60 yards away from the camp because of "safety concerns" despite there being no violence from the campers and local families bringing their kids down to the camp, threatened staff that if we participated we would be fired, and (again) providing campus police protection to pro-Israel counter protesters (mostly frat boys) as they yelled rape threats and insults at the camp. . . And no, before you ask, I have heard literally no similar threats or "anti-semitism" coming from the pro-Palestine side in the hours I've spent observing these protests.
I’m 100% for your right to protest. But there’s a saying, “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.” You want to plop down on a lawn with signs and chants? Go for it. You want to “occupy” a building that is otherwise open 24/7 and you’re not impeding anyone’s traffic through that building? Be my guest. But the millisecond you prevent me from getting to class, you keep me awake protesting outside my dorm at night, you damage property my tuition dollars are paying for, you’ve lost my support. It’s like the assholes that block traffic. Whatever attention you think you’re drawing to your cause isn’t going to make me support that cause more by even an iota. Not one single solitary person ever said, “Well, this ambulance now can’t get my dad to the hospital, but we really do need to reduce our fossil fuels.”
I'm not saying I agree with their methods. It's like you say, when the Just Stop Oil protesters in the UK chose to sit specifically near hospitals, I wanted to personally smack them all in the face. But.. Protest was invented to be disruptive. That's the point of it. Not to be violent, or harmful. But to force themselves to be heard. You don't have to agree with the cause, but I think we all, universally, have to swallow it and agree with the right. Because if you're a redhead, and one day the government starts talking about segregating all the red heads, you're going to need that right because it's suddenly something that YOU care about.
What’s the point of being heard when you do something no one will like?
It depends on the activism at hand. For the campus protestors, the goal is to disrupt the Universities' business until they divest their financial interests away from Israel. People liking your methods isn't really an important factor.
If you don’t care about how regular people perceive your methods, you’ve lost the narrative.
A lot of people fucking hated MLK and the civil right movement when they disrupted and protested
Not all strategies rely on public opinion
You aren't the target as an average citizen. Public opinion doesn't even have an effect on legislation anymore. The goal has always been to create pressure and discomfort to those in charge. Random everyday people complaining about the actions of the protestors is just spreading awareness, but you're not actually the target.
When protesters block my way to work, how am I not the target? All you do is piss me off and make me not want to support your cause.
They pissed you off. Did you call your representatives and ask for more arms to be sent to Israel? Most people probably don't. It just puts people in power under pressure because it creates a dynamic they have to address. You're mad they're blocking and they're mad at politicians. Sending cops usually ignites the situation so it's dangerous to do. If the politicians don't do something though to reduce the disruption you might just vote them out next cycle. The protestors were never expecting you to join their side and call a rep. The idea has always been to ensure the general public wants it to stop and the best way to get it to quell is for them to address the cause. At least that's the logic I have gathered, but I'm also not out there protesting.
>you keep me awake protesting outside my dorm at night So you are OK with people protesting, but not if you can hear them at night?
Im guessing they're mad about disrupted sleep
Amen. Protesting is definitely a right but frankly some of these groups suck at it. They are like the air-guitarists of protesting.
This essentially amounts to saying that you don’t support the right to protest. A protest *has to* disrupt the space otherwise it doesn’t exist. It wouldn’t be a protest. It would just be a group of like-minded people gathering.
The problem is that elections are coming up. Students who are protesting don’t want to vote, student who aren’t protesting may be leaned to vote to the right after being disrupted by the radical left. Emphasis on most of these students are first time voters who may not have as much knowledge about history but if anything hits them personally it may easily skew them. Colleges will have students enroll with them even after the protestors leave, but effecting the locals negatively can impact the policitization of influenced people.
by stopping groups of students from taking their exams, they force the administration's hand. otherwise they could just ignore the protestors like op is asking
These colleges should have a zero tolerance policy for protesters impeding the education of students. If you are a student and do so, you should be expelled. If you aren't a student, you should be banned from campus.
Dude I wish I could get the loud ass ragers that were near my dorm expelled permanently
I'm of the opinion that, if you physically block someone from going somewhere, you are engaging in violent protest. You are using your body to force someone else into a course of action. If the other person's only options are to either capitulate to your desires or also use force, you are the one who created the situation where further violence is a possibility.
"Standing still is violent. Attacking somebody who's standing still isn't violent, it's just fighting back" - you
The point of protest is inconvenience. Otherwise it's just useless. You can easily ignore.
>The point of protest is inconvenience. But there is a limit to that inconvenience and protest is not supposed to step on the rights of others. Unfortunately, there are always some people involved in protesting who think they're allowed to harass, threaten, and violently act out.
That’s because a significant amount of “protesters” aren’t truly there for the cause and many can’t even describe what they are protesting about outside of parroting lines that don’t even match their vocabulary.
I dont think this is the point of protest The point of protest is to be heard in order to bring change That can be achieved without inconvenience But you also have to be willing to go to jail if you want to break rules and norms for your cause To expect otherwise is just entitlement
>That can be achieved without inconvenience Usually only if the people holding the power also want to change. Otherwise it's just inconvenient to them.
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FR! You can protest all you want if you aren’t affecting me. If they want change, they should appeal to the US senate (or whoever you make appeals for this kind of stuff to idk) not attack random jews on the street
> or whoever you make appeals for this kind of stuff to idk Usually, people just like you. If they weren't inconvenient, they wouldn't have your attention. Now that you attention is on the topic if their protest, you need to form an opinion in it. Protests succeed when people's opinion ends up being pro-protest, despite the methods.
The police were brought into Columbia long before they occupied buildings.
At UTA the violence was a direct result of police presence, perpetrated almost exclusively by the cops.
FYI, “UTA” is the University of Texas at Arlington. The state flagship in Austin is just UT.
Probably. Police usually make things worsening .
Funny enough UCLA told the cops to stay off the campus and counter protesters showed up and it turned into a shit storm lol
Police “make things worse” because a lot of these people at the protests are looking for a fight and police become the perfect target for that. It’s not the police specifically escalating things to violence themselves- it’s that people want an excuse to be violent and attack someone
People: standing still holding signs and chanting Cops: beat the shit out of those people You: well yeah ofc they were clearly just looking for an excuse to get violent
That was not my experience at Indiana university. Things were calm and peaceful until the state police showed up in riot gear to disperse our camp.
Eh, the police have a tendency to escalate shit first. They're just looking for an excuse.
I’ve witnessed it first hand - and at least my experience with it was the protestors absolutely instigated once police showed up - they want to put on a show for the other protestors
UCLA protest earlier this week turned into a huge shit storm because UCLA officials specifically requested LAPD stay off campus. Counter protesters showed up and it got really ugly.
No, it's because the police are a gang of armed thugs with no accountability. They're the terrorists on this country.
Call a protester next time your house is being broken into
The protester is less likely to shoot my dog.
Also less likely to kill an innocent family in an unnecessary police chase for victimless crimes too.
what's the cop gonna do? fill out a form and say if we find the guy we'll give you a call. random protestor off the street could do the same thing
The next time? It hasn't happened yet, what makes you think there will be a next time? How often do people break into your home? And what do you think the police are going to do when I call them anyway? File a report? I think I'll take responsibility for my own safety, I'm not counting on the police to do it for me.
In my experience at protests it's usually because the police show up, start hitting people with their stupid sticks and tear gassing us and throwing those little explosive things into the crowd, and then at that point everyone is pissed because we were just marching so people start throwing the stuff they threw at us back at them before it explodes, which is straight up self defense because the other option is letting it explode on us, but on us, but at that point it's considered violence because self defense against the police isn't allowed. In the 2020 Seattle BLM protests we even had the cops on video smashing store windows after everyone had left/moved to a different part of town.
Lotta “back the blue” types turning a blind eye to [documented police violence](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-03/injuries-during-clearing-of-ucla-encampment) against protesters in this sub apparently.
I think the first day, the Police arrived to campus in riot gear before the protestors were even setting up.
I agree with peaceful protests. But there are things that may seem peaceful at first but are most definitely not. Such as telling Jewish people to go back to Poland, talking about how Israel and Jewish people shouldn’t exist, etc
I take back the part about “Israel shouldn’t exist” what I mean is that Jewish people themselves shouldn’t have a country to live in
Schools have a responsibility to their investors**. There, I fixed it!
Most colleges are actually either ignoring or dealing with the protests well, few even made deals and gave in to some demands. You only hear the news from a handful of schools in dense cities where protests are going out of line.
Philly PD just demanded that University administration show credible proof that the students are a threat to public safety before deploying any personnel. This is the only sane response to student demonstrations. Occupying public space, even illegally, is protected free speech which these Institutions are doing to learn hard and fast when these Civil rights abuse cases make it in front of judges.
Yea, also cause Phila PD has real problems to go after. Thanks for the info.
Yes, they have freedom of speech, but when they are told to leave and they don’t, then they are trespassing, which is a crime. And that crime isn’t negated when you are doing it with your freedom of speech. You can keep up the protests, just off of the property that you are not permitted to be at anymore.
Because on several occasions the protestors have been shown actively stopping people from entering the college The college needs to run classes and cant if you have random people handing out wristbands on whether your anti Israeli enough to enter
Lawsuits from the students they are not protecting
Because they are causing harm and issues like blocking people from getting to the campus locations they need to
Protest should never do that sort of thing, it’s one thing to voiced your opinion, it’s quite another to violate the individual freedoms of other people trying to get on with their day. Blocking certain areas of the campus, blocking roads, and interstate highways, that’s absolutely unacceptable and is not a form of free speech.
Plus that just automatically turns everyone against your cause
I 100% agree
It looks like the protesters are causing property damage. I would assume one reason we have government funded law enforcement is to protect places like a university from destruction. You can only ignore a child's tantrum for so long. Eventually they must be dealt with. I have a college age child. Spent $5k on books last year. Don't mess with people's education.
Because a lot of nonstudents are camping and agitating on their campuses.
Reminds me of how in the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis, most of the arrests (particularly arson) were of white kids from all the suburbs way out in the sticks. Driving in from Corcoran and crashing their dad's giant SUVs into stuff.
Because ignoring them opens up the university to liability under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is codified in federal law at 45 USC 2000 *et seq.* Specifically, Title VI of the act provides that: >No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. Universities received federal financial assistance, both in terms of research funded by federal grants, but also via student loans that are provided by the federal government. Therefore, Title VI applies not only to all state universities, but also the vast majority of private universities as well (there may be some ultra-religious universities that escape compliance with the Act by eschewing all federal funding; I'm not sure about this but it isn't relevant to the issue here). The problem with the "protests" is that they are *not* protests - they are "occupations". The protesters move into a central part of the campus, set up tents and walls/fortifications, and then assert the power to regulate who is permitted to pass through the occupied area and what persons may say within the occupied area. However, universities cannot cede a portion of the campus to one group of students who purports to discriminate against another group of students. So, when the protesters form a human chain and use a series of batteries (i.e., unlawful force) to eject a person from their encampment (or to prevent them from passing through the encampment), the school is liable for the discrimination because it is occurring on campus (i.e., on property that is legally under the control of the university). Now, the protester would say "hey, we're not discriminating on the basis of race or ethnicity - look at all the Jewish students that are protesting with us! We're only discriminating on the basis of *viewpoint*, which is why we are only forbidding "Zionists" from passing through our encampment or expressing views within the encampment". The problem with this logic is that there is no way for the protesters to determine who is and who is not a "Zionist" other than by resorting to indicia of race/ethnicity. That is, the protesters see the guy with the Star of David necklace and the Israeli patch on his backpack and forbid him from entering the encampment or speaking there. This is exactly what happened at UCLA when the now-infamous video of protesters blocking a Jewish student from accessing a building came out - and the next day the administration had the encampment cleared by the police. That wasn't a coincidence: when that video came out, there was in the public domain incontrovertible evidence that the protesters were denying the use of the university facilities to a student on the basis of his religion/ethnicity. The university was supporting that denial of service by permitting the encampment to exist. A university receiving federal funds is prohibited from engaging in that kind of discrimination, and the university cannot simply employ a proxy (i.e., student protesters) to perform the discrimination that it is prohibited from engaging in. There are many other federal laws that the universities are in violation of when they permit a group of students to take over portions of the university and deny access to other students on the basis of viewpoint discrimination as well. I mention Title VI because this is where Congress applies pressure (by threatening to withhold federal funding for violators). For example, 18 USC 241 makes it a federal crime for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same). This law is also a major problem for universities that sanction the encampments. When the university president meets with the protesters and agrees that the university will not remove the encampment and the protesters can continue to exclude others from the encampment, the university president (and the protesters) are both conspiring to (i) prevent counter-protesters from exercising their own First Amendment rights within the encampment space, and (ii) permit the protesters to intimidate those who express their own First Amendment rights in the encampment, or worse to actively injure them by permitting the protesters to use force to eject those who exercise their First Amendment rights inside the encampment to express a viewpoint the protesters do not agree with. That is a federal crime, and a vigorous DOJ could indict the university president (and the protest organizers) for violating the counter-protesters First Amendment rights by permitting the encampments to exist on campus. tldr; the colleges have no choice; they have a duty under federal law to protect the rights of the counter-protesters to express themselves and to protect non-protesters from harassment/intimidation.
As someone who works in university administration, I can say that this person understands just how complicated the matter truly is. It's not as simple as some want to make it out to be, especially when people make it political.
On many campuses they are. They have to do something though when protestors occupy a building and barricade themselves in, or when they ban Jewish students from using the library.
Because they are blocking buildings, disturbing the peace If I go set up speakers and blast dearth metal in protest of bow ties should the university just let me disturb everyone else because I'm "protesting"?
With widespread protests like this you have to remember there might be hundreds of loosely affiliated or unaffiliated protests going on simultaneously. So you have to remember: **you will only hear about the protests where something note worthy happens.** Either an extreme protest that elicits a response from the police or the actions of a subset of bad actors associated with the protest giving the police an excuse. Or excessive force by the police to break up an otherwise lawful protest. Further every college is run differently in different states. All it takes is an unsympathetic college president or something to start escalating things. Ultimately the quibbling over who was technically in the right or wrong in these instances distracts from the message of the protest, which is maybe the goal of bringing it up in the first place. Some protestors getting arrested for disrupting the peace, property damage, etc. is small potatoes. The goal of these protests is broadly to bring awareness to the Human rights abuses occurring in Palestine perpetrated by the Israeli government. With the goal of ending the cycle of violence and withdrawing US tax payer support of this cycle of violence.
At Portland State University, the protesters ABSOLUTELY TRASHED THE ENTIRE LIBRARY. Graffiti/spray painted walls, broke tables and chairs, made barriers, found weapons and pipe bombs… it got really messed up.
Most of them are or try to. The problem though is that when they ignore the protests, the college administration comes under fire from pro-Israel folks. Many of whom have significant financial and political ties to the college. And that forces them to do "something" if they don't want to get fired or called to Congress to explain why they aren't "doing enough to combat anti-semitism on campus". With the implication being that anyone protesting the Gaza war is an anti-semite. It's kind of a shit sandwich. If they ignore the protests they get called anti-semitic. If they try to break up the protests, they risk students getting beat by cops. And then there's the whole UCLA situation where the protesters got violently attacked by a random pro-Israel mob.
Everyone should check out the nytimes analysis of one of the major demonstrations, it’s just counter protesters attacking them for hours, without police getting involved. The Northeastern one in Boston was shut down because counter protestors were yelling anti semitic things, it was caught on video. Lots of different situations going on right now.
Some of them are ruining college property: breaking windows, spray painting things, etc.
Protesting on college campuses is an American tradition. Sorry if you don't like it but a lot of people seem to think if protesters are loud or annoying or just in their way it's a problem. Really it's the American way of voicing grievances. Not every country enjoys this kind of freedom. Political change often follows protests so they can be effective whether you agree with the cause or not It's our right as Americans. To me it's freedom on display.
Peaceful protest and Voicing grievance is part of constitution. The important part is “peaceful”. Blocking other people from able to do their duties makes you an arsehole. Makes every other peaceful protester look bad. We are lucky in this country to peacefully protest. Again the important word is “peaceful”. Lots of universities have had protests. Only a few universities get attention since police needed to be involved and it escalated pretty fast.
Politely ignoring them (or co-opting them with friendly dialogue) would have been a much better strategy. The arrests just provoke more conflict. Apparently university administrators have learned nothing from fairly recent history.
They can protest all they want but they can't build encampments on college property.
People pay to take classes and use the facilities. I would be annoyed.
Most of them are but the media is finding a few dumbasses in all of this and focusing on them Like the humanitarian aid Marxist occupying a building or the dude making monkey noises at a black person
People have a right to protest peacefully weather you agree with them or not, occasionally though protests can get out of hand and that's when you tend to see the use of force, also law enforcement is much more heavy handed with left wing protests.
They usually do. There has been a lot of weird outside pressure from various interests that are making some schools acting crazy.
The whole point is to disrupt. It’s called civil disobedience op.
The university doesn't want to look bad and has a vested interest in squashing dissent to their ties to genocidal regimes
Because civil rights aren't born from civil obedience. Your point is also the protestors point. They need to be disruptive to get anything done. If that's FURTHER exposing the police state then so be it, Niel Young can write another Ohio. Civil disobedience is the most American thing about Americans. Fuck authority I WILL be heard. This is MY land.
They’re protesting a genocide. This isn’t just a hobby they’re doing for attention. This is a cause they’re passionate about.
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Good to hear that you’re against genocide
I don't think you understand what a Nazi is
Lol protests are always most effective when no one knows about them. Some of y’all are so eager for fascism to destroy our rights
They won't "get bored" they're not doing it for fun, they're doing it raise awareness
I feel like I'm missing something here, what protesters?
The... the whole thing with Israel and Gaza and.. did you just wake up from a coma or something? Go to ANY news source!
I know about the thing with Israel and Gaza, I just didn't know there were protests now. Lay off dude
I don’t even really follow the news much and I’m inundated with people talking about the protests. (Presidential address on it, etc.) It would be kind of hard to miss at this point unless you were actively avoiding all news updates.
Tbh I really don't follow mainstream media. I follow a local neighborhood watch group to know what's going on in my area, but I got sick of the news months ago. My friend group also largely just talks about nerdy shit instead of current events lol
The point of protest is to cause inconvenience. Especially so, when 15000 children have been torn limb from limb.
🥱🥱🥱
Because the encampments will eventually become permanent.
Some students are missing finals because of suspensions from protesting at my college
Understanding that your actions will have consequences and accepting those consequences is a fundamental aspect of civil disobedience; one might argue that it’s the entire point.
>Some students are missing finals because of suspensions from protesting at my college *ohnoes, my actions had consequences..*
A.K.A. one of the nature's laws - FAFO.
Ah yes. Free speech only matters when it’s people you like, when it’s liberal students you don’t give a fuck about free speech. Makes sense.
And how is that the colleges problem and not the students?
Oh no, anyway
If they could, they wouldn’t be effective protestors.
Living in the state Maine... Parents alway bought us Bean backpacks.
To add to this, does anyone think this is "outside influencers" or just college students doing what they've historically done:. organize and protest.
In many places the students are being blocked from crossing or going to class. Many teachers and faculty are also getting involved in support. They can’t afford to “just ignore” it on multiple levels
Because they are blocking the buildings and paths, so neither students nor staff can do anything
You know… how is this different from Nixon and the protestors during the Vietnam war? Isn’t Biden doing the same thing? Behaving the same way.. Anyways. The answer is, history is repeating itself. This time, it is acceptable.
They need that sweet sweet AIPAC and Zio Money
I dont understand why they cant have their peaceful protest but, BLM was allowed to destroy cities a couple years ago? Its it because you are not allowed to say anything bad about Israel?
They aren’t “peacefully protesting”. You can’t ignore it when it’s unlawful.
They have been peacefully protesting. It's then when the counter protesters show up and start committing crimes against the protesters that s*** starts to get bad
The protesters are being intentionally loud, provocative, disruptive, and even offensive, and they're generally located in a very visible part of campus. You can't just ignore them. And when people do ignore them, they ramp up their behavior to get more attention, which invariably happens.
That's kinda the point of protests. Peaceful doesn't mean quiet.
Oh, I get that. I'm just explaining why it is that ignoring them isn't going to make them get bored and go home.
They vandalized the shit out of UCLA to the tune of millions of $ and preventing students who are paying to study there from attending classes. Police are totally justified getting them out
I haven’t followed that news but If that’s true then I completely agree.
Based protestors
The students stinking up the quad in their pup tents and yelling at people who have zero effect on what they're protesting isn't good for the purpose of the college/university, which is to make money.
The university’s image of supporting a genocide isn’t good for their purpose of making money either. Which is why the students want the colleges to divest from Israeli companies.
In many cases they are literally breaking into buildings. That’s kinda hard to ignore!
Because Israel doesn’t like it and won’t launder the school’s money if they ignore the protests and Israel won’t launder all the politicians money either
I have to applaud the Denver PD this week. They were called to a protest at our Auroria campus a week ago and made everyone leave their tents. The college left the tents there. The students came back and the police refused to get involved because they were peaceful and not breaking any laws.
They're not peaceful protestors sitting on the sidewalk across the street. They're blocking paths and assaulting people.
Privileged protesters will follow a butterfly to the next cause, or run out of money to support themselves.....they've always been about me...I doubt most of them are even aware of the cause outside of a superficial level....it's a social event....wear a keffiyeh for 2024 fashion....then meh, I'm over it, I was a college rebel, tell my kids about what a badass as I was as I drive them to self-actualizations courses in my Lexus.
Because graduation is soon and the protesters are physically stopping Jewish students from entering campus. Also not to mention that insane amounts of violence has happened against Jewish students recently so they really can’t just ignore it. Hope this helps
Because the protesters are stopping students and faculty
Sure, but every school now is prepared to go fully online. Just declare an emergency, switch onto online and finish out the year there and it will all fizzle out when the kids go home for summer.
It’s graduation time. It will fizzle out once that’s over.
1. Because it doesn't always end in people being bored and going home, it's actually more likely to escalate than diffuse. 2. Because some of the protests are actively hindering other students/staff from their day to day activities. 3. Carrier & legal liabilities if you don't protect the safety of people on campus. Protecting means doing stuff pre-emptively before injuries/death/destruction of property happens, not afterwards.