Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via AP
A bicyclist cycles past a tent encampment in White Plaza in support of Palestinians, April 30, 2024, at Stanford University.
On April 30, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik authorized the mass arrest of roughly a hundred student protesters living in a pro-Palestine encampment. Two days later, police in riot gear swept an encampment on UCLA’s Royce Quad, dispersing students with tear gas and flash-bang grenades. Student protesters watched from around the country, wondering whether their campus would be next.
But across California’s Bay Area, student protesters have so far maintained uneasy truces with university administrators. Encampments have grown steadily in Santa Cruz and San Francisco, without police intervention.
Students involved in the UC Santa Cruz encampment credit faculty members for maintaining dialogues with administration and police. Professors living in the encampment have served as legal observers, monitoring interactions with law enforcement and warning that they will hold them accountable for unlawful behavior. Many faculty participated in the UC-wide graduate student strike—the largest education strike in American history—in 2022. They have been teaching students how to protect themselves and their identities as they express their demands.
Local communities have also supported protesters by donating food, camping equipment, and medical supplies. Most encampments have surpluses of food and offer meals to visitors. Her community’s generosity taught Ines, a student organizer at the encampment at Stanford University, that “community and people are what support us,” rather than the police or the government. Not having to worry about food allows her to focus on her responsibilities to the camp.
Students have developed contacts in other schools to coordinate the exchange of resources and personnel. For example, UC Berkeley students donated 15 tents to the San Francisco State University encampment on the day of its construction. SFSU, meanwhile, rushed to offer tarps and blankets to University of San Francisco protesters, who were hit hard by last week’s rains.
Encampment organizers draw on the Bay Area’s history of student activism to inform their strategies. From October 20, 2023, to February 16, 2024, students occupied Stanford University’s White Plaza to pressure administrators to divest from Israeli academic institutions. The “Sit-In to Stop Genocide” was inspired by a sit-in conducted by Stanford students on April 3, 1965, to protest the Vietnam War. From May 3 to 5, the Stanford encampment hosted a reunion of the April Third Movement, which featured a film screening and discussions with the movement’s original members.
On May 4, SFSU students held an educational meeting to glean lessons from the anti-war movements of the 1960s and ’70s. The meeting taught Brian, a student organizer of the SFSU encampment, that civil disobedience movements need more than students to succeed. “We need to get the working class involved, because they have the power to stop production and bring America to a grinding halt,” he said. For SFSU protesters, that means canvassing dorms and dining halls to recruit workers and collaborating with members of the United Auto Workers, many of whom reside in the encampment. Many graduate student teachers and other university employees are organized through the UAW.
Students doubt administrators have any plans to meet their demands: “They’re just waiting us out.”
After the police action at the Columbia campus, UAW President Shawn Fain condemned the mass arrests of student protesters and demanded their immediate release. Separately, on Monday, UAW Local 4811, which represents University of California student employees and grad students, announced a vote to authorize a strike, to be held between May 13 and 15.
Across campuses, protesters demand their universities disclose investment portfolios and divest from defense firms like Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin, which supply the Israeli military with the fighter jets, attack helicopters, and missiles they use to attack Gaza. But even in encampments that haven’t encountered resistance from administrators, students doubt administrators have any plans to meet their demands. “They’re just waiting us out,” said Ines.
As a former member of the Sit-In to Stop Genocide, she speaks from experience. In the final days of the occupation, Stanford administrators promised to protect protesters from legal persecution and expulsion and meet with them in two hour-long sessions, if they agreed to disband. The protesters agreed, eager to share their demands. But Ines said the meetings were merely opportunities for the university to “show face,” and that “nothing fruitful” came from the discussions.
According to the protesters, universities have found subtle ways to control protests. Stanford dispatched police officers to the encampment quickly after its establishment. Administrators said they were there to protect protesters, but members of the encampment insist the police are only there to conduct surveillance. Last week, a counterprotester interrupted a vigil for civilians killed in Gaza, shouting obscenities at members of the encampment and calling them terrorist sympathizers. According to Ines, the police did not intervene until the counterprotester began shoving members of the encampment.
After a week of requests, protesters at SFSU secured an open bargaining meeting with university president Lynn Mahoney, who expressed openness to reviewing the school’s investment policy. However, Mahoney’s vague answers to students’ questions and her refusal to commit to disclosure frustrated many protesters. Other schools, like University of San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz, haven’t heard back from their administrators at all.
Many students suspect university officials are wary of jeopardizing their schools’ progressive reputations by cracking down on student activists. SFSU, for instance, was the site of the longest student strike in American history, which resulted in the creation of the country’s first Black Studies department, a fact the university proudly advertises on their website and in promotional materials.
Protesters find motivation in resistance from their administrations. Brian was “disheartened” to see police using violence to subdue protesters at UCLA and Columbia. “It put a lot of fear in us when we were planning our encampment,” he said. “But it shows us we are doing the right thing. This much repression means the establishment is scared of us. The Palestinian cause is winning around the world.” The protesters plan to stay indefinitely, until their demands are met.
